f J N
PAINTED
BY-SUTTON-
PALMER
DESCRIBED-BY
A-R-HOPE
* MONCRIEFF -
m»
of
ttemt of ®mrottta
Jlrojvu
I
V"
BONNIE SCOTLAND
That I for poor auld Scotland's sake,
Some uscfu' plan, or beuk could make.
BURNS.
BENEATH THE CRAGS OF BEN VENUE,
PERTHSHIRE
BONNIE SCOTLAND
PAINTED BY SUTTON
PALMER • DESCRIBED BY
A. R. HOPE MONCRIEFF
PUBLISHED BY A. ^ C.
BLACK' LONDON' MCMXII
683021
I9«4
Refr'mtid 1905, 1911
Note
THE author does not attempt elaborate word -pictures,
that would seem pale beside the artist's colouring. His
design has been, as accompaniment to these beautiful
landscapes, an outline of Scotland's salient features, with
glimpses at its history, national character, and customs,
and at the literature that illustrates this country for the
English-speaking world. While taking the reader on a
fireside tour through the varying " airts " of his native
land, he has tried to show how its life, silken or home-
spun, is a tartan of more intricate pattern than appears
in certain crude impressions struck off by strangers.
And into his own web have been woven reminiscences,
anecdotes, and borrowed brocade such as may make
entertaining stripes and checks upon a groundwork of
information. The mainland only is dealt with in this
volume, which it is intended to follow up with another
on the Highlands and Islands.
Contents
CHAPTER I
THE BORDERS
PAGE
I
CHAPTER II
AULD REEKIE
CHAPTER III
THE TROSSACHS ROUND
45
CHAPTER IV
THE KINGDOM OF FIFE .
69
CHAPTER V
THE FAIR CITY
90
CHAPTER VI
THE HIGHLAND LINE
ill
CHAPTER VII
" ABERDEEN AWA' ! "
vn
136
Contents
CHAPTER VIII
PAGE
To JOHN o' GROAT'S HOUSE . . . • • *57
CHAPTER IX
THE GREAT GLEN • • >77
CHAPTER X
GLASGOW AND THE CLYDE . . • • 197
CHAPTER XI
THE WHIG COUNTRY . . • • • .215
CHAPTER XII
GALLOWAY . . • • • • 244
via
List of Illustrations
1. Beneath the Crags of Ben Venue, Perthshire . Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
2. Tantallon Castle, on Coast of Haddingtonshire . . 2
3. The Bass Rock, Firth of Forth, off Coast of Haddingtonshire 4
4. Neidpath Castle, Peeblesshire . , . " . . 8
5. Abbotsford, Roxburghshire . . . . .12
6. Melrose, Roxburghshire . . . . .16
7. Scott's favourite View from Bemerside Hill, Roxburghshire . 20
8. Edinburgh from " Rest and be Thankful " . . . 24
9. Edinburgh from Salisbury Crags — Evening . . .28
10. Craigmillar Castle, near Edinburgh . . 32
11. Linlithgow Palace . . . . . .36
12. The Bass Rock — A Tranquil Evening . . ..38
13. Loch Achray, the Trossachs, Perthshire . . .42
14. Stirling Castle from the King's Knot . . .46
15. The Outflow of Loch Katrine, Perthshire . . . 48
16. In the Heart of the Trossachs, Perthshire . . 50
17. Brig o' Turk and Ben Venue, Perthshire . . 52
1 8. Birches by Loch Achray, Perthshire . . -54
19. Head of Loch Lomond, looking up Glen Falloch, Perthshire 56
20. Golden Autumn, the Trossachs, Perthshire. . 58
21. The River Teith, with Lochs Achray and Vennachar,
Perthshire ," . . . . .60
ix
List of Illustrations
FACING PAGE
22. Veiled Sunshine, the Trossachs, Perthshire . . .62
23. Near Ardlui, Loch Lomond, Dumbartonshire . . 64
24. The Silver Strand, Loch Katrine, Perthshire . . 66
25. Loch Achray and Ben Venue, Perthshire . . .68
26. The Castle of St. Andrews, Fifeshire . . -7°
27. Loch Lubnaig, Perthshire . . . . 76
28. In Glenfmlas, Perthshire . . . . .80
29. On the Dochart, Killin, Perthshire . ... .84
30. Perth from the Slopes of Kinnoul Hill . . .90
31. Ben A'an, corner of Loch Katrine, Perthshire . . 94
32. Loch Vennachar, Perthshire . . . . 98
33. A Croft near Dalmally, Argyllshire . . .102
34. Wet Harvest Time near Dalmally, Argyllshire . .106
35. The Grampians from Boat of Garten, Inverness-shire . 112
36. Killin, Perthshire . . . . . .114
37. A Moor near Killin, Perthshire . . . .116
38. In Glenfinlas, Perthshire . . . . .118
39. Looking up Glen Lochay near Killin, Perthshire . .120
40. Beneath the Slopes of Ben Ledi, near Callander, Perthshire 122
41. A Wild Spot, Killin, Perthshire . . . .124
42. The Falls of Tummel, Perthshire . . . .126
43. Dunkeld and Birnam from Craigiebarns, Perthshire ^ . 128
44. A Wooded Gorge, Killin, Perthshire . . '.130
45. Looking up the Pass of Killiecrankie, Perthshire . .132
46. Killin, Head of Loch Tay, Perthshire . . . 134
47. Dunnottar Castle, Kincardineshire . . . 136
48. Old Mar Bridge and Lochnagar, Aberdeenshire . .140
49. Balmoral, Aberdeenshire . . . . .144
50. Strath Glass, Inverness-shire . . . .148
51. A Peep of the Grampians, Inverness-shire . . .152
52. The River Glass near Beauly, Inverness-shire . .158
53. Moor of Rannoch, Perthshire and Argyllshire . .162
x
List of Illustrations
FACINO PACE
54. The Isles of Loch Maree, Ross-shire . . .166
55. Moor and Mountain, Ross-shire . . . .170
56. Crags near Poolewe, Ross-shire . . . .174
57. Inverness from near the Islands . . . .178
58. Tomdoun, Glen Garry, Inverness-shire . . .182
59. A Shepherd's Cot in Glen Nevis, Inverness-shire . .186
60. River Awe flowing to Loch Etive, Argyllshire . .190
6 1. A Croft near Taynuilt, Loch Etive, Argyllshire . .194
62. Glencoe, Argyllshire . . . . .198
63. Garelochhead, Dumbartonshire .... 202
64. Glen Sannox, Isle of Arran .... 206
65. Loch Triochatan, Entrance to Glencoe, Argyllshire . 210
66. Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran . . . . .214
67. The Falls of the Clyde, Lanarkshire . .- \ 216
68. A Highland View . . . . . . .220
69. Kilchurn Castle, Loch Awe, Argyllshire . . . 226
70. River Coe, Glencoe, Argyllshire . . . .230
71. Ben Cruachan from Inverlochy, Argyllshire . . . 234
72. The Morven Hills from Appin, Argyllshire . .238
73. A Croft near Loch Etive, Argyllshire • .. , . . 242
74. A Birch-Wood in Springtime, by Loch Maree, Ross-shire . 246
75. On the River Ayr, Ayrshire . . . .250
XI
BONNIE SCOTLAND
CHAPTER I
THE BORDERS
THE dawn broadens, the mists roll away to show a north-
ward-bound traveller how his train is speeding between
slopes of moorland, green and grey, here patched by
bracken or bog, there dotted by wind-blown trees, every-
where cut by water-courses gathering into gentle rivers
that can be furious enough in spate, when they hurl a
drowned sheep or a broken hurdle through those valleys
opening a glimpse of mansions and villages among
sheltered woods. Are we still in England, or in what at
least as far back as Crom well's time called itself " Bonnie
Scotland " ? It is as hard to be sure as to make out
whether that cloudy knoll on the horizon is crowned by a
peat-stack or by the stump of a Border peel.
Either bank of Tweed and Liddel has much the same
aspects. An expert might perhaps read the look or the
size of the fields. Could one get speech with that brawny
corduroyed lad tramping along the furrows to his early
job, whistling maybe, as if it would never grow old, an
air from the London music-halls, the Southron might be
none the wiser as to his nationality, though a fine local ear
Bonnie Scotland
would not fail to catch some difference of burr and broad
vowels, marked off rather by separating ridges than by
any legal frontier, as the lilting twang of Liddesdale from
the Teviot drawl. Healthily barefooted children, m ore's
the pity, are not so often seen nowadays on this side of
the Border, nor on the other, unless at Brightens and
Margates. The Scotch " bonnet," substantial headgear as
it was, has vanished ; the Scotch plaid, once as familiar on
the Coquet as on the Tweed, is more displayed in shop
windows than in moorland glens, now that over the
United Kingdom reigns a dull monotony and uniformity
of garb. Could we take the spectrum of those first
wreaths of smoke curling from cottage chimneys, we
might find traces of peat and porridge, yet also of coal
and bacon. Yon red-locked lassie turning her open eyes
up to the train from the roadside might settle the
question, were we able to test her knowledge whether of
the Shorter Catechism or of her "Duty towards her
Neighbour." It is only when the name of the first
Scottish way-station whisks by, that we know ourselves
fairly over the edge of "Caledonia stern and wild"; and
our first thought may well be that this Borderland appears
less stern than the grey crags of Yorkshire, and less wild
than some bleak uplands of Northumberland.
What makes a nation ? Not for long such walls as
the Romans drew across this neck of our island, one day
to point a moral of fallen might, and to adorn a tale of
the northern romancer who by its ruins wooed his alien
bride. Not such rivers as here could be easily forded by
those mugwump moss-troopers that sat on the fence of
Border law, and —
2
TANTALLON CASTLE,
ON COAST OF HADDINGTONSHIRE
The Borders
Sought the beeves to make them broth
In England and in Scotland both.
Is it race? Alas for the ethnologic historian, on its
dim groundwork of Picts and Celts — or what ? — Scotland
shows a still more confusing pattern of mingled strains
than does the sister kingdom ! To both sides of the
Border such names for natural features as Cheviot, Tweed,
and Tyne, tell the same tale of one stock displaced by
another that built and christened its Saxon Hawicks,
Berwicks, Bamboroughs, and Longtowns upon the Pens
and Esks of British tribes. — Is it a common speech ?
But from the Humber to the Moray Firth, along the east
side of Britain, throughout the period of fiercest clash of
arms, prevailed the same tongue, split by degrees into
dialects, but differing on the Forth and the Tyne less than
the Tyne folks' tongue differed from that of the Thames,
or the speech of the Forth from that of the Clyde mouth.
So insists Dr. J. A. H. Murray, who of all British
scholars was found worthy to edit the Oxford English
Dictionary, that has now three editors, two of them born
north of the Tweed, the third also in the northern half
of England. • Scottish " wut " chuckles to hear how,
when the shade of Boswell pertly reported to the great
doctor that his post as Lexicographer-General had been
filled by one who was at once a Scotsman and a dis-
senter, all Hades shook with the rebuke, " Sir, in striving
to be facetious, do not attempt obscenity and profanity ! "
— or ghostly vocables to such effect.
Is it loyalty to a line of princes that crystallises patriot-
ism ? That is a current easily induced, as witness how
the sentiments once stirred by a Mary or a Prince Charlie
3
Bonnie Scotland
could precipitate themselves round the stout person of
George IV. — Is it religion? Kirk and Covenant have
doubtless had their share in casting a mould of national
character ; but the Border feuds were hottest among
generations who seldom cared to question "for gospel,
what the Church believed." — Is it name ? Northerners
and Southerners were at strife long before they knew
themselves as English and Scots.
By a process of elimination one comes to see how esprit
de corps seems most surely generated by the wont of
standing shoulder to shoulder against a common foe.
Even the shifty baron, "Lucanus an Apulus anceps,"
whose feudal allegiance dovetailed into both kingdoms,
that professional warrior who " signed on," now with the
northern, now with the southern team, might well grow
keen on a side for which he had won a goal, and bitter
against the ex-comrades who by fair or foul play had come
best out of a hot scrimmage. Heartier would be the
animosity of bonnet-lairds and yeomen, between whom
lifting of cattle and harrying of homes were points in the
game. Then even grooms and gillies, with nothing to
lose, dutifully fell into the way of fighting for their salt,
when fighting with somebody came almost as natural to
men and boys as to collie dogs. So the generations beat
one another into neighbourly hatred and national pride ; till
the Border clans half forgot their feuds in a larger senti-
ment of patriotism ; and what was once an adventurous
exercise, rose to be a fierce struggle for independence.
The Borderers were the " forwards " of this international
sport, on whose fields and strongholds became most hotly
forged the differences in which they played the part of
4
THE BASS ROCK, FIRTH OF FORTH,
OFF THE COAST OF H ADDINGTONSHIRE
The Borders
hammer and of anvil by turns. Here, it is said, between
neighbours of the same blood, survive least faintly the
national resentments that may still flash up between
drunken hinds at a fair. Hardly a nook here has not
been blackened and bloodstained, hardly a stream but has
often run red in centuries of waxing and waning strife
whose fiery gleams are long faded into pensive memories,
and its ballad chronicles, that once " stirred the heart like
a trumpet," can now be sung or said to general applause
of the most refined audiences, whether in London or
Edinburgh.
The most famous ground of those historic encounters
lies about the East Coast Railway route, where England
pushes an aggressive corner across the Cheviots, and the
Tweed, that most Scottish of rivers, forms the frontier
of the kingdoms now provoking each other to good works
like its Royal Border Bridge. Beyond it, indeed, stands
Berwick-upon-Tweed, long the football of either party,
then put out of play as a neutral town, and at last
recognised as a quasi-outpost of England, whose parsons
wear the surplice, and whose chief magistrate is a mayor,
while the townsfolk are said to pride themselves on a
parish patriotism that has gone the length of calling Sandy
and John Bull foreigners alike. This of course is not, as
London journalists sometimes conceive, the truly North
Berwick where a prime minister might be seen " driving "
and " putting " away the cares of state. That seaside
resort is a mushroom beside Berwick of the Merse, stand-
ing on its dignity of many sieges. The Northumberland
Artillery Militia now man the batteries on its much-
battered wall, turned to a picturesque walk ; and the
5
Bonnie Scotland
North British and North Eastern Railways meet peacefully
on the site of its castle, where at one time Edward I. caged
the Countess of Buchan like a wild beast, for having
dared to set the crown upon Bruce's head. At another,
it was in the hands of Baliol to surrender to an Edward
as pledge of his subservience ; and again, its precincts
made the scene of a friendly spearing match between
English and Scottish knights, much courtesy and fair-play
being shown on both sides, even if over their cups a
perfervid Grahame bid his challenger " rise early in the
morning, and make your peace with God, for you shall
sup in Paradise ! " who indeed supped no more on earth.
The North British Railway will carry us on near a
stern coast-line to Dunbar, whose castle Black Agnes,
Countess of March, defended so doughtily against Lord
Salisbury, and here were delivered so signally into Crom-
well's hands a later generation of Scots "left to them-
selves " and to their fanatical chaplains ; then over a land
now swept by volleys of golf balls, to Pinkie, the last
great battlefield between the kingdoms, where also, almost
for the last time, the onrush of Highland valour routed
redcoat soldiery at Prestonpans. But tourists should do
what they do too seldom, tarry at Berwick to visit the
tragic scenes close at hand. In sight of the town is the
slope of Halidon Hill, on which the English took their
revanche for Bannockburn. Higher up the Tweed, by the
first Suspension Bridge in the kingdom, by "Norham's
castled steep," watch-tower of the passage, and by Ford
Castle where the siren Lady Ford is said to have ensnared
James IV., that unlucky "champion of the dames," a
half- day's walk brings one to Flodden, English ground
6
The Borders
indeed, but the grave of many a Scot. Never was
slaughter so much mourned and sung as that of the
" Flowers of the Forest," cut down on these heights above
the Tweed. The land watered with " that red rain " is
now ploughed and fenced ; but still can be traced the out-
lines of the scene about the arch of Twizel Bridge on which
the English crossed the Till, as every schoolboy knew in
Macaulay's day, if our schoolboys seem to be better up in
cricket averages than in the great deeds of the past, unless
prescribed for examinations.
Battles, like books, have their fates of fame. Flodden
long made a sore point in Scottish memory ; yet, after all,
it was a stunning rather than a maiming defeat. A far
more momentous battlefield on the Tweed, not far off,
was Carham, whose name hardly appears in school histories,
though it was the beginning of the Scotland of seven
centuries to come. It dates just before Macbeth, when
Malcolm, king of a confused Scotia or Pictia, sallied forth
from behind the Forth, and with his ally, Prince of
Cumbria on the Clyde, decisively defeated the Northum-
brians in 1018, adding to his dominions the Saxon land
between Forth and Tweed, a leaven that would leaven the
whole lump, as Mr. Lang aptly puts it. Thus Malcolm's
kingdom came into touch with what was soon to become
feudal England, along the frontier that set to a hard and
fast line, so long and so doughtily defended after mediaeval
Scotland had welded on the western Cumbria, as its cousin
Cambria fell into the destinies of a stronger realm. Had
northern Northumberland gone to England, there would
have been no Royal Scotland, only a Grampian Wales
echoing bardic boasts of its Rob Roys and Roderick Dhus,
7
Bonnie Scotland
whose claymores might have splintered against Norman
mail long before they came to be beaten down by bayonets
and police batons.
But we shall never get away from the Border if we
stop to moralise on all its scenes of strife — most of them
well forgotten. Border righting was commonly on a small
scale, with plunder rather than conquest or glory for its
aim ; like the Arabs of to-day, those fierce but canny
neighbours were seldom in a spirit for needless slaughter,
that would entail fresh blood-feuds on their own kin. The
Border fortresses were many, but chiefly small, designed
for sudden defence against an enemy who might be
trusted not to keep the field long. On the northern side
large castles were rare ; and those that did rise, opposite
the English donjon keeps, were let fall by the Scots them-
selves, after their early feudal kings had drawn back to
Edinburgh. In the long struggle with a richer nation,
they soon learned to take the "earth-born castles'* of
their hills as cheaper and not less serviceable strongholds.
The station for Flodden, a few miles off", is Coldstream,
at that " dangerous ford and deep " over which Marmion
led the way for his train, before and after his day passed
by so many an army marching north or south. The
Bridge of Coldstream has tenderer memories, pointed out
by Mr. W. S. Crockett in his Scott Country. This carried
one of the main roads from England, and the inn on the
Scottish side made a temple of hasty Hymen, where for
many a runaway couple were forged bonds like those more
notoriously associated with the blacksmith of Gretna
Green. Their marriage jaunts into the neighbour country
were put a stop to only half a century ago, when the
8
NEIDPATH CASTLE, PEEBLESSHIRE
The Borders
benefits of Scots law, such as they were, became restricted
to its own inhabitants. English novelists and jesters have
made wild work with the law, by which, as they mis-
apprehend, a man can be wedded without meaning it ;
one American story-teller is so little up-to-date as to
marry his eloping hero and heroine at Gretna in our time.
The gist of the matter is that while England favoured the
masculine deceiver, fixing the ceremony before noon, it is
said, to make sure of the bridegroom's sobriety, the more
chivalrous Scots law provided that any ceremony should
be held valid by which a man persuaded a woman that
he was taking her to wife. No ceremony indeed was
needed, if the parties lived by habit and repute as man and
wife. The plot of Colonel Lockhart's Mine is Thine, one
of the most amusing novels of our time, turns on a noted
case in which an entry in a family Bible was taken as a
sufficient proof of marriage. It is only gay Lotharios who
might find this easy coupling a fetter ; though in the
next generation, especially if it be careless to treasure
family Bibles, there may arise work for lawyers, a work of
charity when the average income of the Scottish Bar is
perhaps five pounds Scots per annum.
Gretna Green, of course, lies on the western high-road
from England, beside which the Caledonian Railway route
from Carlisle enters Scotland, soon turning off into a part
of it comparatively sheltered from invasion by the Solway
Firth, whose rapid ebb and flow make a type of many
a Gretna love story. This side too, has often rung with
the passage of armed men. At Burgh-on-Sands, in sight
of the Scottish Border, died Edward I., bidding his bones
be wrapped in a bull's hide and carried as bugbear standard
9 *
Bonnie Scotland
against those obstinate rebels. The rout of Solway Moss
made James V. turn his face to the wall, his heart break-
ing with the cry, " It came with a lass and it will go with
a lass ! " And the Esk of the Solway was seldom " swollen
sae red and sae deep " as to daunt hardy lads from the
north who once and again
Swam ower to fell English ground,
And danced themselves dry to the pibroch's sound.
These immigrants, unless they found six feet of English
ground for a grave, seldom failed to go " back again,"
perhaps with an English host at their heels. Prince
Charlie's army passed this way on its retreat from Derby.
But this side of the Borderland is less well illustrated by
stricken fields and sturdy sieges. It has, indeed, no lack
of misty romance of its own, such as an American writer
dares to bring into the light of common day by adding
a sequel to Lady Heron's ballad, in which the fair Ellen is
made to nurse a secret grudge at last confessed : she could
not get over, even on any plea of poetic license, that rash
assertion :
There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far
Who would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar !
"Fosters, Fen wicks, and Musgraves," how they rode
and they ran on those hills and leas in days unkind to " a
laggard in love and a dastard in war"! These names
belong to the English side, as does Grahame in part.
Elliot and Armstrong, Pringle and Rutherford, Ker and
Home, Douglas, Murray, and Scott, are Scottish Border
clans, who kept much together as in the Highlands. " Is
there nae kind Christian wull gie me a night's lodging ? "
10
The Borders
begged a tramp on the Borders, and had for rough answer,
" Nae Christians here ; we're a' Hopes and Johnstones ! "
a jest transmuted farther north into the terms of a black
Mackintosh and red Macgregors.
The first name of fame passed on the Caledonian line
is Ecclefechan, birthplace of Thomas Carlyle, now a
prophet even in his own country, but it is recorded how
a devout American pilgrim of earlier days found no re-
sponsive warmth in the minds of old neighbours. " Tarn
Carlyle — ay, there was Tarn ! " admitted an interrogated
native. " He went tae London ; they tell me he writes
books. But there's his brither Jeems — he was the mahn
o' that family. He drove mair pigs into Ecclefechan
market than ony ither farmer in the parish ! " Tom had
carried his pigs to a better than any Dumfriesshire
market. If we turned west by the Glasgow and South-
western Railway, we should soon come among the shrines
of Burns and the monuments of Wallace. But let us
rather take the central route, on which flourishes a greener
memory.
The " Waverley " route from Carlisle, a central one
between those East and West Coast lines, so distinguishes
itself as passing through the cream of the country
associated with Sir Walter Scott, its first stage being the
wilds of Liddesdale, where he spent seven holiday seasons
collecting the Border Minstrelsy. This district, where
"every field has its battle and every rivulet its song,"
can boast of many singers. From the days of Thomas
the Rhymer comes down its long succession of ballad-
makers who "saved others' names but left their own
unsung." At Ednam was born James Thomson, bard
ii
Bonnie Scotland
of The Seasons and of "Rule, Britannia," who surely
deserves a less prosaic monument than here recalls him.
From Ednam, too, came Henry Lyte, a name not so
familiar, but how many millions know his hymn " Abide
with me " ! Some of Horatius Bonar's hymns were
written during his ministry at Kelso. About Denholm
were the " Scenes of Infancy " of John Leyden, poet and
scholar, cut off untimely. Near his humble home, now
turned into a public library, is the lordly house of Minto,
one of whose daughters wrote the " Flowers of the Forest."
Thomas Pringle, the South African poet, was born at
Blakelaw, near Yetholm, the Border seat of gipsy kings.
Home, the author of Douglas, is said to have come from
Ancrum, which can more certainly claim Dr. William
Buchan of Domestic Medicine renown. Riddell, author of
" Scotland Yet," began life as a Teviot shepherd. If we
may touch on living names, was not Mr. Andrew Lang
born among the " Soutars of Selkirk," who has gone so
far ultra crepidam ? But indeed a whole page might be
filled with a bare catalogue of the bards of Tweed and
Teviot.
The genius loci, greatest of all, while born in Edin-
burgh, sprang from a Border family of "Scotland's gentler
blood." The cradle of his race was in Upper Teviotdale,
near Hawick, that thriving " Glasgow of the Borders,"
among whose busy mills the old Douglas Tower still
stands as an hotel, and rites older than Christian Scotland
are cherished at its time-honoured Common Riding. Not
far off are Harden, home of Wat Scott the reiver, and
Branxholme, that after being repeatedly burned by the
English, bears an inscription of its rebuilding by a Sir
12
ABBOTSFORD, ROXBURGHSHIRE
The Borders
Walter Scott of Reformation times, whose namesake and
descendant would make its name known so widely. At
Sandyknfcwe farm, between the Eden and the Leader
Water, he lived as a sickly child in his grandparents'
charge, and under the massive ruin of Smailholm Tower,
drank in with reviving health the inspiration of Border
lore and romance —
Ever, by the winter hearth,
Old tales I heard of woe or mirth,
Of lover's sleights, of ladies' charms,
Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms ;
Of patriot battles, won of old
By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold ;
Of later fields of feud and fight,
When, pouring from their Highland height,
The Scottish clans, in headlong sway,
Had swept the scarlet ranks away.
While stretch'd at length upon the floor,
Again I fought each combat o'er,
Pebbles and shells, in order laid,
The mimic ranks of war display'd ;
And onward still the Scottish Lion bore,
And still the scatter'd Southron fled before.
Later on, the old folks being dead, his sanatorium
quarters were shifted to his aunt's home at Kelso,
where also an uncle bought a house, inherited by the
lucky poet. For a time he attended the Grammar
School, whose pupils had for playground the adjacent
ruins of the Abbey, so roughly handled in Border wars
and by iconoclastic zealots. This boy had other resources
than play, who could forget his dinner in the charms of
Percy's Reliques ; and his lameness did not hinder him
from roaming over the beautiful country in which Tweed
'3
Bonnie Scotland
and Teviot meet. Their confluence encloses the ruins
of Roxburgh Castle, once a favourite royal residence and
strong Border fortress, before whose walls James II., try-
ing to wrest it back from the English, was killed by the
bursting of one of those new-fangled " engines " that
were to break down moated castles, replaced by such
sumptuous mansions as Floors, the modern cMteau of the
Duke of Roxburghe. Roxburgh town has disappeared
more completely than its castle, its name surviving in that
of the picturesque Border shire where, off and on, Scott
spent much of his youth, photographing on a sensitive
mind the scenes he has made famous, and getting to
know the flesh-and-blood models of Meg Merrilies, Edie
Ochiltree, Old Mortality, Dandie Dinmont, Josiah Cargill,
and other "characters" that but for him might now be
forgotten.
Kelso stands almost on the site of Roxburgh, but its
place as county town is taken by Jedburgh, guard of the
" Middle March," farther to the south, yet not so near
the crooked border line. It stands upon a tributary of
the Teviot, among "Eden scenes of crystal Jed," flow-
ing down from the Cheviots. Tourists do not know
what they miss by grudging time to divagate on the
branches connecting the two main lines of the North
British Railway. Jedburgh, birthplace of scientific cele-
brities, Sir David Brewster and Mrs. Somerville, has
another grand Abbey, that suffered much from early
English tourists ; and its jail occupies the site of a
vanished royal castle. In this old seat of "Jeddart
justice," Scott began his career at the Bar, by the defence
of such a poacher and sheep-stealer as his own forebears
The Borders
had been on a bolder scale. Here a few years later, he
met Wordsworth in the house recently marked by a
memorial tablet ; and other dwellings are pointed out as
having housed Queen Mary and Prince Charlie, while
Burns has left a warm record of his visit, so many
of Scotland's idols has Jedburgh known, and may well
reproach the hasty travellers who pass it by.
The young advocate did not waste much of his
genius on defending sheep-stealers and the like ; but in
those halcyon days of patronage, through the influence
of his chief, the Duke of Buccleuch, he soon got the
snug berth of Sheriff of Selkirk. This brought him to
live at Ashes tiel on the Tweed, where he spent his happiest
days, writing his best poems, and beginning Waverley, to
be laid by and forgotten for years. Selkirk, too, has the
misfortune of lying off the main line ; but strangers
would do well to turn aside here for the wild pastoral
scenes of St. Mary's Loch and the "Dowie Dens of
Yarrow." Too many, like Wordsworth, put off this trip
to rheumatic years ; yet it may be easily done by the coach
routes from Selkirk and from Moffat on the Caledonian
line, that meet at Tibbie Shiels' Inn, whose visitors' book
enshrines such a collection of autographs ; and its homely
fame scorns the pretensions of the new " hotel." This is
the heart of Ettrick Forest, where stands a monument of
its shepherd, James Hogg, unfairly caricatured as the
genial buffoon of the Noctes, but second only to Burns as
a popular poet, and best known over the English-speaking
world by his " Bird of the wilderness, blithesome and
cumberless." All the schooling he had was a few months
in early childhood ; he taught himself to write on slate
15
Bonnie Scotland
stones of the hillside where he herded cows, and this art
he had to relearn when he first tried to sing of green
Ettrick —
In many a rustic lay,
Her heroes, hills, and verdant groves ;
Her wilds and valleys fresh and gay,
Her shepherds' and her maidens' loves.
The North British junction for Selkirk is at Galashiels,
another thriving woollen town, whose mills may not have
improved the physique of the " braw lads of Gala Water.'*
Before reaching this, the main line, holding up the Tweed
where it is looked down upon by a colossal statue of
Wallace, passes two more of David I.'s quartet of Abbeys,
so that the tourist has no excuse for not visiting Dryburgh
and Melrose. Melrose, indeed, is a tourist shrine, that
owns a somewhat sheltered climate, with natural charms
enough to fill its adjacent Hydropathic and the hotels
about the Abbey and the Cross, nucleus of a group of
Tweedside hamlets, to which warm red stone, sometimes
filched from the ruins, gives a snug and cheerful aspect ;
then the nakedness of the slopes, held by Scott a beauty,
though he laboured to clothe it with plantations, hides
nooks like that Rhymer's Glen, where True Thomas was
spirited away by the Fairy Queen, and that Fairy Dean in
which the White Lady of Avenel appeared to Halbert
Glendinning. Above rise the triple Eildon Hills, in
whose caverns Arthur and his knights lie sleeping, and
from the top, as our Last Minstrel boasted, can be seen
more than forty spots famed in history or song.
Of Melrose Abbey, the finest remains of Scottish
ecclesiastical architecture in its golden age, and of its
16
MELROSE, ROXBURGHSHIRE
The Borders
illustrious tombs, let the guide-books speak, and the
romance that deals with this neighbourhood of " Kenna-
quhair," an alias plagiarised by Carlyle in his Weissnichtwo.
Visiting it " by pale moonlight " or otherwise, few will
not turn three miles up the river to that other show-
place, Abbotsford, the Delilah of his imagination that
bound Scott in withs of care and set him to toiling for
Philistines. The baronial mansion, now overlooked by
outlying villas of Galashiels, was all his own creation,
and most of the trees were planted by himself, in the
absorbing process that began with buying a hundred ill-
famed acres, and ended with such unfortunate success in
making, as he said, "a silk purse out of a sow's ear."
When one thinks what it cost him, this exhibition of
artificial feudalism has its painful side ; yet another Sir
Walter, a romancer of our own generation, declares that it
"would make an oyster enthusiastic." But more moving
is the pilgrimage from Melrose down the Tweed to
where, in St. Mary's Aisle of Dryburgh Abbey, the most
beautiful fragment of a noble fane, among the tombs of
his kin lies at rest Scotland's most illustrious son, he who
best displayed the warp and woof that makes the chequered
pattern of his country's nature.
When will Cockney revilers learn that Scotland is not
all thrift, caution, and kailyard prose, but a nation showing
two main strains, which Mr. John Morley suggests as
the explanation of Gladstone's complex character ? One
component may be hard, practical, frugal, in politics tend-
ing to democracy, in religion to logic ; but this has been
crossed by a spirit, better bred in the romantic Highlands,
that is generous, proud, quick-tempered, reckless, reverent
J7 3
Bonnie Scotland
towards the past, rather than eager for progress. The
painter of Scottish life must recognise how Fitz- James and
Roderick Dhu are countrymen with Bailie Nicol Jarvie
and Andrew Fairservice, how Flora Maclvor is not less
a Scotswoman than Mause Headrigg or Jenny Dennison,
and how the Jacobite and the Presbyterian enthusiasm
smacked of the same soil. If one shut one's eye to half
the case, it would be easy to make out that rash im-
petuosity flourished beyond the Tweed rather than the
thistly prudence taken for a more congenial crop.
Scott comprehended both of these elements. By
birth and training he belonged to the Saxon, by sympathy
to the Celt. If his father was a douce Edinburgh " writer,"
one of his forebears had been that " Bear die " who bound
himself never to shave till the Stuarts came back to their
own. Brought up under the dry light of the Revolution
Settlement, in his reminiscences of childhood he transforms
a worthy parish minister into a " Venerable Priest," and
in later life he came to be himself little better than an
Episcopalian. It may be owned he had no more religion
than became a Cavalier ; even the romance of supersti-
tion did not take much hold on him, and that rhyming
" White Lady " has not even a ghostly life on his page.
His favourite heroes are the like of Montrose and Claver-
house, yet he can do justice to the stern virtues of the
Covenanters. In the sober historian mood he duly warns
his grandchild how life was galled and fettered in the
good old days, which he was too willing to see couleur de
rose when their picturesque incidents offered themselves to
the romancer. He turns a blind eye, perhaps, too much
on the faults of knights and princes, yet he knows the
18
The Borders
worth of ploughmen and fisherfolk, and into Halbert
Glendinning's and Henry Morton's mouths he puts senti-
ments to which John Bright or Cobden might say amen.
He is happiest, indeed, in the past, when " the wrath of
our ancestors was coloured gules" whereas we have learned,
like Mr. Trulliber's wife, to be Christians and take the
law of our enemies. His appetite for imaginary blood-
shed is a sore offence to writers like Mark Twain, who
appear less scandalised that a pork-baron, a corn-lord,
or a cotton- king should plot to be rich by starving
children on the other side of the world. But Scott's very
failings reflect the character of his countrymen, who,
Highland and Lowland, have been mighty fighters before
the Lord on a much wider field than from Berwick to
John o' Groat's House. The pity is that this imaginative
writer, who knew all characters better than his own,
should have fancied himself a shrewd man of business, a
part for which he was too generous and trustful. Of his
personal merits, the most marked is that in a class of
sedentary craftsmen notoriously apt to be irritable, bilious,
jealous, and vainglorious, Walter Scott stands out by
hearty, wholesome, human qualities which present him as
the type of a Scottish gentleman.
Whatever record leap to light,
He never shall be shamed !
To have done with the "Scott Country," we should
hold on westward up the Tweed to where its sources
almost mingle with those of the Clyde, below the bold
mass of Tinto and other hills that might claim a less
modest title. This route would bring us by the renowned
'9
Bonnie Scotland
inn of Clovenfords, "howff" of Christopher North and
many another choice spirit, by Ashestiel, then by Inner-
leithen, set up as a spa through its claim to represent
St. Ronan's ; and so to Peebles, a haunt of pleasure since
the days when James I. wrote of " Peeblis to the play."
For some reason or other, Peebles and Paisley have
become butts of Gotham banter, their very names attract-
ing the sly jests by which Scotsmen love to make fun
of themselves. But neither of them is a town to be
sneezed at. Peebles, for its part, after falling into a rather
sleepy state, has been wakened up in our time through
the Tontine "hottle," that so much excited Meg Dods'
scorn ; the huge Hydropathic that has introduced German
bath practice into Scotland ; and the Institution bestowed
on the town by William Chambers, who hence set out
to turn the proverbial half-crown into a goodly fortune.
Was it not at this Institution that the local Mutual
Improvement Society gravely debated the question, " Shall
the material Universe be destroyed ? " and decided, by
a majority of one, in the negative ! When Sir Cresswell
Cresswell, from his peculiar bench, laid down the dictum
that marriages between May and December often turned
out ill, it must have been a Paisley statistician who wrote
to him for the data on which he founded his assertion
that " marriages contracted in the latter part of the year,
etc." But Paisley has its manufacturing prosperity to
fling in the teeth of calumny ; and Peebles has romantic
as well as comic associations, notably its Neidpath Castle
and its Manor Water Glen, haunted by memories of the
Black Dwarf.
The leisurely tourist might gain Edinburgh by a
20
SCOTT'S FAVOURITE VIEW FROM BEMERSIDE HILL,
ROXBURGHSHIRE
The Borders
branch line through Peebles, and this route can be re-
commended to the hippogriffs of cycles and motors.
Beyond the Catrail, ancient barrier of the Picts or the
Britons of Strathclyde, our main railroad, as its way
is, keeps on straight up the course of the Gala, leaving
to its right the dreary Lammermoors ; then between the
Castles of Borthwick and Crichton, it enters on the more
prosaic Lothian country. To the left is seen the Pentland
ridge, and straight ahead springs up the cone of Arthur's
Seat beaconing us to Edinburgh, goal of the race for
which a Caledonian express will be speeding along the
farther side of the Pentlands.
And not a kilt have we seen yet, since leaving London !
Of this more anon ; kilts are not at home on the Borders,
though I have seen one on the Welsh Marches, worn in
conjunction with a pith helmet by a retired Liverpool
tradesman. Since "gloves of steel" and " helmets barred "
went out of fashion on Tweedside, the local colour has
been that modest shepherd's plaid displayed in Lord
Brougham's trousers to the ribaldry of Punch, and even
that goes out of homely wear. You may buy Scott and
Douglas tartans in the shops, but they seem vain things,
fondly invented, as indeed are some of the patterns now
seen in the Highlands. But there will be a good show
of kilts in Edinburgh Castle, where once they were like
to be bestowed in the dungeon : —
Wae worth the loons that made the laws
To hang a man for gear —
To reave o' life for sic a cause
As lifting horse or mare !
And here our North British express, panting through
21
Bonnie Scotland
the fat Lothians, comes to slacken under the castellated
walls of that gaol which tourists are apt to take for the
Castle — no true kilts to be looked for there nowadays, yet
perhaps at the Police Court under the head of drunk and
disorderly ! So let us leave the Borderland behind with
a quotation from an American writer (Penelope in Scotland)
who knows what's what, and who at first sight fairly loses
her heart to Edinburgh, haars, east winds, and all, that are
its thorns in the flesh. " I hope," she very sensibly says,
" that those in authority will never attempt to convene
a Peace Congress in Edinburgh, lest the influence of the
Castle be too strong for the delegates. They could not
resist it nor turn their backs upon it, since, unlike other
ancient fortresses, it is but a stone's-throw from the front
windows of all the hotels. They might mean never so
well, but they would end by buying dirk hat-pins and
claymore brooches for their wives ; their daughters would
all run after the kilted regiment and marry as many of
the pipers as asked them, and before night they would
all be shouting with the noble Fitz-Eustace,
Where's the coward that would not dare
To fight for such a land ? "
22
CHAPTER II
AULD REEKIE
"AuLD REEKIE," as it is fondly called, still raises its
smokiest chimneys and most weathered walls along the
" hoary ridge of ancient town " that culminates in the
Castle Rock, looking across a long central line of gardens
to the farther swell of land on which stands the New
Town of Scott's day. But New Town now seems a
misnomer, since the cramped site of the old city, itself
much sweetened and aerated by innovations, is surrounded
by newer towns expanding in other directions. South-
wards, of late years, Edinburgh has grown more rapidly
up to the foot of the hills that here edge the suburbs of
Newington, Grange, and Morningside. Westwards she
spreads out towards Corstorphine Hill and Craiglockhart.
On the east her progress is barred by the mass of Arthur's
Seat, but round the base of this creep rows of tall houses
that will soon connect her with Portobello, that minor
Margate of the capital, now comprised within her municipal
boundaries. Northwards, she goes on " flinging her white
arms to the sea," which she almost touches at Granton
and Trinity ; and a long unlovely street leads to the
Piraeus of this modern Athens, Leith, still stiffly standing
Bonnie Scotland
aloof in civic independence. Including Leith, which
refuses to be included, the Scottish metropolis began the
century with a population not far short of 400,000.
On high in the midst of these modern settings, the
charms of Old Edinburgh are thrown into becoming relief,
as the medley smartness of Princes Street is enhanced by
its facing the grim backs of the High Street "lands."
Ruskin and other critics have said hard things of the New
Town's architects ; but their strictures do not go without
question. What, at all events, must strike strangers is an
imposing solidity of the modern buildings, whether tall
"stairs" — Anglict flats — or roomy private houses, nearly
all built of a grey stone that seems in keeping with the
atmosphere ; and this not only in the central streets and
squares, but in outer suburbs, innocent of brick and stucco.
If a too classical regularity has been aimed at, this is
tempered by the unevenness of the ground, breaking up
the " draughty parallelograms," giving vistas into the open
country, and at night such long panoramas of glittering
lights displayed on slopes and crests. The place, says
R. L. Stevenson, who has so well caught the picturesque
points of his native city, " is full of theatre tricks in the
way of scenery. . . . You turn a corner, and there is the
sun going down into the Highland hills. You look down
an alley, and see ships tacking for the Baltic." And if
the city fathers have been ill advised in the past, its
municipality may claim the credit of being first in the
kingdom to take powers for disinfecting it against
the plague of mendacious and hideous advertisements
that are too much allowed to pock our highways and
byways.
24
EDINBURGH FROM " REST AND BE THANKFUL '
Auld Reekie
A peculiar feature of the city is its " Bridges," by which
certain streets span others at different levels, physically
and socially. From the unique Dean Bridge, in the heart
of the West End, one overlooks what might be taken for
a Highland glen but for the lines of mansions that edge it
above. When I came to Edinburgh as a homesick little
schoolboy, appalled by the " boundless continuity " of
street, I devoted my first Saturday freedom to an attempt
at discovering the open country. This was happily before
the days of schoolboys being driven and drilled to play.
Striking the Water of Leith at Stockbridge, I turned along
the path leading into this glen that might well satisfy
desires for a green solitude. But on reaching the village of
Dean, embedded below the bridge, I climbed up to find
myself beside the dome of St. George's Church, lost deeper
than ever in that bewildering city. Still, a little trimmed
and tamed, an oasis of wooded bank shuts in the rushing
stream, now purified and stocked with trout, where we
were content to catch loaches and sticklebacks.
What a loss to this city was the classically-minded
Gothicism or carelessness through which came to be rooted
up so many noble trees that once dotted the parks of
Drumsheugh and Bellevue ! But Edinburgh has been
well endowed afresh with open spaces and shrubberies,
those that separate the blocks of the New Town mainly
private joint-stock paradises, yet serving for public amenity.
The Old Town is enclosed between the noble stretch of
the Princes Street Gardens on the north, and on the south
the open Meadows, with its " Philosopher's Walk " of
Dugald Stewart's and Playfair's days, rising into the
Bruntsfield Links. Then the city is almost ringed about
Bonnie Scotland
by parks, more than one of them including grand features
of natural scenery. Philadelphia is the only city I know
which has such wild scenes at her very doors, in her case
collected together in the Fairmount Park, where miles of
hill and river landscape have been left almost untouched
among the streets and suburbs, yet boasting no points so
noble as the head of Arthur's Seat, with its girdle of crags,
screes, and lakes.
This miniature Ben, imposing as it looks, is under
1000 feet high, and easily climbed. Those almost past
their climbing days may seek Blackford Hill on the
south side, where Scott tells us that he bird's-nested as a
truant boy, and speaks of it as at a later day brought
under cultivation ; but it has relapsed again to its native
wildness, laid out as a rough park and as site for the squat
domes of the new Observatory. From this eminence one
gets Marmion's view of the city, now grown up to its
foot, shut in between Arthur's Seat and the wooded ridge
of Corstorphine, and bounded to the north across the Firth
by the heights of Fife, above which, in clear weather, stand
up the blue bastions of the Highlands. Behind Blackford,
one may keep up the wooded hollow of the Hermitage, by
a public path following the stream, and thus gain the Braid
Hills, overlooking the city a little farther back. Keep-
ing along their edge, at some risk from flying golf balls,
one can hold on to the hotel built between the old and
the new south roads. Here, at the terminus of suburban
trams, looking to the Pentlands up the valley of the Braid
Burn, by which runs a field path towards Swanston, the
country home of R. L. Stevenson, one might hardly
guess oneself so near a great city, but for the lordly
26
Auld Reekie
poorhouse and fever -hospital buildings to the back of
Craiglockhart Hill.
In the very heart of the city are view-points fine enough
to content hasty travellers, from the battlements of the
Castle, from the spire of Scott's Monument, from the slopes
of the Calton Hill, with its array of ready-made ruins and
monuments with which Edinburgh has sought to live up
to her classical pretensions. This rises beyond the east
end of Princes Street, opposite the battlemented gaol, and
a little way past that Charing Cross of Auld Reekie, where
its main ways meet between the Post Office, the Register
House and the tower of a new North British Hotel look-
ing down upon the glass roofs of the sunken Waverley
Station. At the other end of Princes Street, an opening
before the Caledonian Station may be called Edinburgh's
Piccadilly Circus, radiating into its Mayfair quarter. This
end is dominated by the Castle, suggesting to Algerian
travellers a duodecimo edition of that wonderful rock-set
city Constantine. It shows little of the modern fortress,
rather a pile of ugly barracks which a Japanese cruiser could
knock to pieces from the Firth ; but one understands how
in old days its site made it a Gibraltar citadel, that often
could hold out when the town was overrun by foemen
taking care to keep themselves beyond range of the Castle
guns. Taylor, the Water Poet, who had seen something
of war in his youth, judged it "so strongly grounded,
bounded, and founded, that by force of man it can never
be confounded." The King himself did not gain admit-
tance on his recent visit without a ceremony of summons
by the Lord Lyon King of Arms ; but all and sundry, at
reasonable hours, may stroll across its drawbridge to lounge
27
Bonnie Scotland
on the ramparts, to be conducted over historic relics by
veteran ciceroni, or to wait for the stunning report of the
gun, which, fired from Greenwich at one o'clock, brings
every watch within hearing to the test.
From this " Maiden Castle," safe refuge for princesses
of the good old times, a conscientious tourist makes for
Holyrood by the long line of High Street and Canongate,
bringing him past most of the historic sites and monu-
ments— the " Heart of Midlothian," the Parliament House,
the swept and garnished Cathedral of St. Giles, beside
which John Knox now lies literally buried in a highway,
as was Dr. Johnson's pious wish for him ; the restored
Market Cross, the Tron Church, Knox's House, which
counts rather among Edinburgh's Apocrypha, and many
another ancient mansion, once alive with Scotland's proudest
names, now degraded to an Alsatia of huge dingy tene-
ments, swarming forth vice and misery at nightfall. The
way narrows through an unsavoury slum as it approaches
the deserted home of kings, beyond which opens a park
such as no king has at his back door.
Holyrood was originally an abbey, founded by David I.
" in gratitude," says the legend, " for his miraculous de-
liverance from a stag on Holy Rood Day, and prompted
thereto by a dream." Similar stories are told of many
another prince less disposed to ecclesiastical benefactions
than David, that " sair saint to the crown " ; even John
of England founded one abbey, at Beaulieu, as an act
of grace prompted by nightmare visions. Beside David's
Abbey of the Holy Cross sprang up a palace that, as well
the sacred precincts, suffered much in the troubles of
the Stuart reigns, being frequently burned or spoiled by
28
EDINBURGH FROM SALISBURY CRAGS EVENING
Auld Reekie
English tourists of their period, on the last occasion
" personally conducted " by one Oliver Cromwell, who
had small respect either for palaces or abbeys. In
Charles II.'s time it was rebuilt somewhat after the style
of Hampton Court, while the Abbey, devastated by a
Presbyterian mob, came to be refitted with a too heavy
roof that crushed it into utter ruin. The present building
is thus modern, but for the ruins behind, and the restored
portion incorporating Queen Mary's apartments. The
name of the Sanctuary opposite was no vain one up till
about half a century ago, when impecunious debtors used
to take asylum within its bounds, privileged to issue free
on Sundays, else venturing forth to feast or sport only
at the risk of thrilling adventures with bailiffs.
Everyone who has been to Edinburgh knows the sights
of this show place : the portraits of Scottish kings, more
or less mythical, "awful examples" as works of art, the
whole gallery, it is said, done by a Dutch painter of the
seventeenth century for a lump sum of £250 ; the tapes-
tried rooms of Darnley ; the Queen's bedchamber ; and
the dark stain on the flooring where Rizzio is believed to
have gasped out his life, after being dragged from the side
of his mistress. Every reader must know Scott's story of
the traveller in some patent fluid for removing stains, who
pressed the use of his nostrum on the horrified custodian.
What every stranger does not know is how this " virtuous
palace where no monarch dwells " is still used for functions
of state. Annually, in May, the Lord High Commissioner
takes up his quarters here as representative of the Crown
in the General Assembly of the Church, when green peas
ought to come into season to make their first appearance
29
Bonnie Scotland
on the quasi-royal table. Ireland, that makes such loud
boast of her grievances, basks in the smiles of a Lord-
Lieutenant all the year, while poor patient Scotland has a
blink of reflected royalty for one scrimp fortnight, during
which the old palace wakes to the life of levhs, drawing-
rooms, and dinners, where black gowns and coats are
more in evidence than in most courtly circles. The
Commissioner's procession from the palace to open the
Assembly lights up the old Canongate with a martial dis-
play ; and more or less festivity is held within the walls
according to the wealth or liberality of the Commissioner,
who, like the Lord Mayor of London, should be a rich
man to fill his office with due Mat. But when King
Edward VII. recently visited Edinburgh, to the regret of
the citizens, he did not take up his quarters in the palace,
pronounced unsuitable by the prosaic reason of its drains
being somewhat too Georgian, a matter that has now been
amended.
A more occasional function fitly transacted here is the
election of representative peers for Scotland in a new
parliament. As every schoolboy ought to know, our
Constitution admits only sixteen Scottish peers to sit in
Parliament, most of them indeed having place there in
virtue of British peerages — the Duke of Atholl as Lord
Strange, for instance, the Duke of Montrose as Lord
Graham, and so forth. Of those left out in the cold,
sixteen are " elected " by a somewhat cut-and-dried process
very free from the heat and excitement of popular voting.
As I have seen it, the ceremony seemed to lack impressive-
ness. Some dozen gentlemen in pot hats and shooting
jackets assembled in the Picture Gallery before an audience
30
Auld Reekie
chiefly consisting of ladies, more than one of these legis-
lators in mien and appearance suggesting what Fielding
says about Joseph Andrews, that he might have been taken
for a nobleman by one who had not seen many noblemen.
Each of the privileged order, in turn, wrote and read out
a list of the peers for whom he voted, usually ending " and
myself." Certain practically-minded peers sent in their
votes by post. The most moving incident was the ex-
pected one of an advocate in wig and gown rising to put
in for a client some unrecognised claim to a title or protest
as to precedency, duly listened to and noted down. The
whole ceremony struck one as rather a waste of time ; but
perhaps the same might be said of most ceremonies. One
thing has to be remembered about these unimposing lords,
that they are a highly select body in point of blue blood,
all representing old families, as the fount of their honour
was dried up at the Union, and the king can make an
honest man as soon as a Scottish peer.
The tourist who comes in for any of such functions
will realise the truth of what R. L. Stevenson says for his
native city : —
"There is a spark among the embers j from time to time the
old volcano smokes. Edinburgh has but partly abdicated, and still
wears, in parody, her metropolitan trappings. Half a capital and
half a country town, the whole city leads a double existence ; it
has long trances of the one and flashes of the other ; like the king
of the Black Isles, it is half alive and half a monumental marble.
There are armed men and cannon in the citadel overhead j you
may see the troops marshalled on the high parade ; and at night
after the early winter evenfall, and in the morning before the
laggard winter dawn, the wind carries abroad over Edinburgh the
sound of drums and bugles. Grave judges sit bewigged in what
31
Bonnie Scotland
was once the scene of imperial deliberations. Close by in the
High Street perhaps the trumpets may sound about the stroke of
noon ; and you see a troop of citizens in tawdry masquerade ;
tabard above, heather-mixture trowser below, and the men them-
selves trudging in the mud among unsympathetic bystanders. The
grooms of a well-appointed circus tread the streets with a better
presence. And yet these are the Heralds and Pursuivants of Scot-
land, who are about to proclaim a new law of the United Kingdom
before two-score boys, and thieves, and hackney-coachmen."
Tourists are too much in the way of seeing no more of
Edinburgh than its historic lions and rich museums, as
indicated in the guide-books. I would invite them to pay
more attention to the suburbs straggling on three sides
into such fine hill scenery as is the environment of this
city. Open cabs are easily to be had in the chief thorough-
fares ; and Edinburgh cabmen have the name of being
rarely decent and civil, as if the Shorter Catechism made
an antidote to the human demoralisation spread from that
honest friend of man, the horse. Give a London Jehu
something over his fare, and his first thought seems to
be that you are a person to be imposed upon ; but I, for
one, never had the same experience here. I know of a
stranger who took a cheaper mode of finding his way
through Edinburgh ; he had himself booked as an express
parcel and put in charge of a telegraph messenger, who
would not leave him without a receipt duly signed at his
destination. But the wandering pedestrian is at great
advantage where he seldom has out of sight such land-
marks as the Castle and Arthur's Seat. There is no better
way of seeing the city than from the top of the tramcars
that run in all directions, the main line being a circular
CRAIGMILLAR CASTLE, NEAR EDINBURGH
Auld Reekie
route from the Waverley Station round the west side of
the Castle, then through the south suburbs, and back
beneath Arthur's Seat to the Post Office. Public motor
cars also ply their terror along the chief thoroughfares.
The trams are on the cable system, invented for the steep
ascents of San Francisco, but out of favour in most cities.
The excuse for its adoption here was that bunches of over-
head wires would spoil such amenities as are the city's stock
in tourist trade. It has the objectionable habit of keeping
up along the line a rattle disquieting to nervous people,
while the car itself steals upon one like a thief in the night ;
but it appears that accidents to life and limb are not so
common as hitches in the working.
The trams now run on Sunday, an innovation that
shocks many good folk, brought up in days when the
streets of a Scottish city were as stricken by the plague,
unless at the hours when all the population came stream-
ing on foot to and from their different places of worship.
A few years ago, I felt it my duty to correct the late
Max O'Rell, who had gathered some wonderful stories
supposed to illustrate the manners of Scotland. As he
related how, getting into an Edinburgh tramcar on Sunday,
his companion insisted on their riding inside not to be
seen of men, one was able to inform him that since the
days of Moses no public vehicle had disturbed Edinburgh's
Sabbath quiet. It is not so now ; and all the old stories
about " whustlin' on the Sabbath " and so forth will soon
be legends, so fast is the peculiar observance of Scottish
piety melting away.
R. L. Stevenson humorously called himself " a country-
man of the Sabbath," but this institution is not so clearly
33 s
Bonnie Scotland
a native of Scotland as has been taken for granted. John
Knox played bowls on Sunday ; and the rigidity that
came in later was due as much to English Puritanism
as to the thrawnness of Scottish revolt against Catholic
practices. Whatever its origin, Sabbatarianism once
weighed heavily on human nature north of the Tweed.
" Is this a day to be talking of days ! " was the rebuke
of the Highlander to a tourist who ventured to remark
that it was a fine Sunday. Not so many years ago, I
have known a Highland farmer refuse the loan of a
girdle to bake scones for a breadless family, " not on the
Sabbath " ; yet this orthodox worthy and his sons, living
as far from a church as from a baker's shop, seemed to
spend most of the day of rest lying by the roadside
smoking their pipes and reading the newspaper. An
exiled Scot, in far distant lands, has told me how the
shadow of the coming Sabbath began to fall on his youth
as early as Wednesday night. The holy day was a
term of imprisonment for juvenile spirits, its treadmill
two long services, chiefly sermon, sometimes run into one,
or separated by only a few minutes' interval, to economise
short winter light in which worshippers might have to
trudge miles to church. It is in the Highlands and other
out-of-the-way parts, of course, that such austerities
linger, while the urban populations more readily adopt
English compromises on this head.
In Edinburgh one generation has seen a great thawing
of the Sabbath spirit. I can remember the excitement
caused all over Scotland by a sermon in which Dr.
Norman Macleod proclaimed that there was no harm in
taking a walk on Sunday. The Scotsman, a paper that
34
Auld Reekie
has never much flattered its readers' prejudices, came out
with a sly humorous article headed " Murder of Moses'
Law by Dr. Norman Macleod," and it is said that some
good people read this in the sense that the " broad "
divine had actually committed homicide. Even earlier,
Edinburgh people had tacitly sanctioned a walk to a
cemetery, as echoing the teachings of the pulpit. The
story went that the present King, when at Edinburgh
University, was sternly denied admission to the Botanic
Gardens on Sunday ; but he might unblamed have taken
a stroll through the adjacent tombs of Warriston. From
the Dean Cemetery, the West End ventured on extending
its Sunday ramble as far as " Rest and be Thankful " on
Corstorphine Hill ; then it was a fresh scandal when a
very Lord of Session came to show himself on this road
in tweeds, instead of the full phylacteries that might
attest previous church-going. Of another judge living
at Corstorphine it is told that he once sought to mend
the morals of a cobbler helplessly drunk at his gate
on Sunday afternoon, but was met by the hiccoughed
repartee, " Wha's you, without your Sabbath blacks ? "
In my youth the police would put a stop to skating
or such like diversions on Sabbath ; but now Sunday
bicycles flit over the country ; the iniquity of a Sunday
band is tolerated in the parks ; while a society is suffered
to promote Sunday concerts and lectures indoors. Another
sign of the times is that Christmas in Edinburgh begins
to be almost as much observed as the national festival of
New Year's Day, whereas orthodox Presbyterianism once
made a point of ignoring fasts and feasts sanctioned by
prelacy or popery. As for its own fasts, they have long
35
Bonnie Scotland
been transmuted into junketings ; and the sacramental
" preachings " of large towns are now frankly abolished
in favour of public holidays answering to the English
saturnalia of St. Lubbock, observed only by banks across
the Tweed. The Communion, in old days administered
but once or twice a year, and regarded in some parts
with such awe that few ventured to put themselves for-
ward as participants, is now a frequent rite in Presbyterian
Churches, whose congregations are throwing off their
horror of ornament and ceremony, as may be seen in
St. Giles. Old-fashioned English rectors of the Simeon
school have been known to shake their heads at the
services now read in the ears of descendants of that Jenny
Geddes who so forcibly testified against a prayer-book
declared by ribald jesters hateful to Scotland through its
too frequent mention of " Collect/'
The honest stranger, then, has nothing to fear from
the austerity of Scottish morals, not even the supposed
risk of being married by mistake. It will be his own fault
if he fail to find a welcome across the Tweed. Effusive
manners are not the Scot's strong point, and he may be
accused of a certain suspicion of offence, kept sharp by
the careless and not ill-natured insolence of southrons
who are so free with their jovial jests about " bawbees "
and such like, well-worn and rusty pleasantries coined in
the days of Bute's unpopularity and Johnson's bearish
dogmatism. Among the baser sorts of Scots are still
current inverse sarcasms against English " pock-puddings,"
conceived as fat and greedy ; but they would have to be
fished up from a low social stratum by the travelling
gent who cannot understand that, however little disposed
36
I
LINLITHGOW PALACE
Auld Reekie
Sandy may have been to hang his head for honest poverty,
he ill relishes its being flung in his face. u A sooth
bourd is nae bourd," says the old proverb ; but now, what
with tourists, and trade, and Scotsmen who come back
again, bringing the spoils of the world with them, the
reproach of poverty ceases to be so sore a one.
Though in the eyes of busy Glasgow Edinburgh may
pass as a retired capital, living on its means of attraction,
it has in fact several industries from which to earn a
livelihood. Along with the lodging and amusing of
strangers, it must do a good business in the tartans,
pebbles, silver-work, and other showy wares displayed in
Princes Street shop windows. "Edinbury Rock," done
up in tartan wrappers, is much pressed upon the notice
of tourists ; the same indeed being sold in other towns
under their own name. As for shortbread, scones,
biscuits, and other manufactures of the " Land of Cakes,"
these have invaded London, where every baker not a
German is like to be a Scot. It will be noted by
Cockney revilers as a proof of Scotch thriftiness, which
might bear another interpretation, that what costs a penny
in a London baker's shop is here sold for a halfpenny.
Well known to strangers are the Princes Street con-
fectioners' shops, several of them extensive restaurants
like that one which, crowning its storeys of accommoda-
tion, has a roof garden looking upon the Castle opposite.
The staple trades of Edinburgh have come to be
printing and publishing, and, as the nettle grows near
the dock, brewing and distilling. The great Scottish
publishing firms have of late years shown a tendency to
gravitate towards London ; but more than one still keeps
37
Bonnie Scotland
its headquarters here, beside some of the largest and
best printing establishments in the kingdom. It must
be confessed that what is spoken of as "the trade," is
whisky, too much consumed about the premises, as
visitors are apt to note. The worst shame a Scotsman
need take for Scotland is on account of what Englishmen
specially distinguish as " Scotch." I never heard sadder
jest than the laughing comment of a group of Dundee
lasses, as they passed a braw lad wallowing in the gutter
at mid-day — " He's having his holidays ! " Yet as to this
reproach, something might be said in plea for mitigation
of judgment. Something to the purpose was said by
that experienced toper who explained how " whusky
makes ye drunk before ye are fu', but yill makes ye fu'
before ye are drunk." The whisky drunk by the lower
classes here is a demon that takes no disguise. It seems
that, while there is more brutal intoxication in Scotland,
there may be less toping sottishness than in England.
Men seen so helplessly overcome at the ninth hour of
a holiday are perhaps of ordinarily sober habits, all the
more readily affected by occasional indulgence in fiery
spirit. A woman frequenting public-houses implies a
lower depth of degradation. In the north, a larger
proportion of the population are abstainers ; young
people and the class of domestic servants for instance,
drink water where in English families they would expect
beer. In all classes, there are still too many Scotsmen
religious in the worship of their native Bacchus, vulgar
and violent deity as he is ; but every year adds to the
number of Protestants against this perverted fanaticism.
By the Forbes Mackenzie Act, all public-houses are
38
THE BASS ROCK A TRANQUIL EVENING
If]
i" '.I- :l
Auld Reekie
closed on Sunday, when, however, if all stories be true,
a good deal of shebeening or illicit drinking goes on in
the cities. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the
austerity of Scottish Sabbatarianism has driven many into
vicious indulgence ; and much is to be hoped from the
churches taking an interest in honest amusement as a
help and not a hindrance to religion. But a sneer often
thrown out by strangers against the supposed hypocrisy
of Scotsmen, only shows ignorance of a country where
those most concerned about Sabbath observance have
long been the deadliest enemies of drinking habits.
Whisky, as well as golf, has now so masterfully
invaded England, that this can no longer be called
" Scottish Drink," as it was not by Burns. In his day,
home-brewed beer was the Lowland beverage, of which
a Cromwellian soldier complained as more like brose for
its thickness. Up to our day " Edinburgh Ale " made
the capital's chief contribution to the heady gaiety of
nations. Whisky came in from the Highlands, its
name a contraction of uisgebeatha^ " water of life," which
Burns and Scott write usquebaugh^ the Celtic word for
water being the same that appears in so many river
names Esk, Usk, Exe, Axcy and so forth. Even in
the Highlands, this mountain dew would seem to have
supplanted beer within historic times ; and old writers
admire the temperance as much as the honesty and
courage of Highlanders. Both Highland and Lowland
gentlemen preferred brandy, in the days when, as Lord
Cockburn tells us, claret was hawked about the Edinburgh
streets in a cart, a jug of any reasonable size being filled
for sixpence.
39
Bonnie Scotland
Firm and erect the Caledonian stood,
Old was his mutton, and his claret good.
Let him drink port ! a beef-fed statesman cried.
He drank the poison and his spirit died.
The preference for French wine and spirits before
the days of Hanoverian fiscalities, relates to the old
alliance with France, which has left its mark also on
Scottish speech. That warning cry " Gardy-loo " (gardez
Teau), which gave such scandal to early English tourists,
was of course a survival of a far-spread practice in cities
before the days of drainage or even of ash-backets
(baquets). Many French household words are used in
Scotland at this day, as "caraff" (carafe), "ashet"
(assiette\ a "jiggot" of mutton (gigot\ a "haggis"
(hachis) ; and Burns's " silver tassie " was of course a
tasse. A " cummer " (commere) " canna be fashed "
(sefdcher) to step out to the "merchant's," who may be
"douce" or "dour" and an "honest" man (honn$te\
though sharp in his bargains. " Ma certie (certes\ that's
a braw (brave} vest ! " quoth a lass to her lad, a word
here used like the French garfon or gars, while gosse will
be distinguished as a "laddie," who grows to be a
"young lad" in spite of orgies on sour "grozers" or
"grozets" and "gheans," which in France are groseilles
and guignes, but in England gooseberries and wild
cherries. French names too have taken root in Scotland,
Janet (Jeannette) being very common with one sex, as
Louis or Ludovic is not unknown in the other. For
the matter of that, one might string together instances
of how the well of Old English flows undefiled by time
in the north.
40
Auld Reekie
Then brought to him that maiden meek
Hose and shoon and sark and breek.
These words are used to this day in every Scottish
cottage, as once in the stately style of an early southron
minstrel. Shakespeare and the Bible show many picked
phrases which are now wild flowers in the north ; and high
example might be found for the shalls and wills that here
run loose from the enclosures of modern grammarians.
But as Mr. David MacRitchie suggests in an interesting
pamphlet, " to doubt that one is colded and can't go to the
church," seem rather specimens of French idioms trans-
planted during the three centuries or so that Capets and
Stuarts stood together against the Plantagenets.
Protestantism availed to draw Scotland from the arms
of France into those of England; then Prelacy and
Presbytery set the near neighbours again at odds. For
some generations, the young Scotsmen who had once
sought the Catholic schools of the Continent, were more
in the way of finishing their education at Dutch or
German Universities. Scotland had also an old connec-
tion, chiefly in the way of trade, with Scandinavia and
Poland, in both of which countries Scottish family names
are naturalised, as Swedish Dicksons and Polish Gordons.
Scots students of our day still look to Germany, under
whose professors they are apt to forget the Shorter
Catechism for the categories of Kant and the secret of
Hegel. The Union was not fully consummated till
Macs began to make themselves at home in Oxford and
Cambridge, while for a time the renown of Scottish
philosophy drew some of the promising English youth
to Edinburgh, whose medical school kept up the attrao
41 6
Bonnie Scotland
tion. In the last generation or two, Scotsmen have been
only too ready to go south for education, seeking a stamp
of Anglified gentility as well as better qualities which were
perhaps not to be had from those rude old dominies
under whom the young laird and the barefoot loon
once sat together in friendly hatred of " carritch " and
rudiments.
Such foreign communications cannot but help young
Scotsmen to put their native prejudices in due proportion,
and to doubt if the sun of truth has always shown most
clearly in the sky of one small people much beset by
mists and east winds. Yet Scottish parents seem much
" left to themselves " in sending their sons and daughters
beyond Edinburgh for schooling. One of the most im-
portant industries of this city has come to be education.
It abounds in teaching of all kinds, from its venerable
University to spick and span board schools. Those
who believe the fable of Scotch niggardliness should
consider that no place in the United Kingdom, unless it
be Bedford, is so rich in educational endowments, and
palatial charity schools, which have long ceased to be
charities. Edinburgh, indeed, suffered from such an
embarrassment of benefactions of this kind, that in our
time, several of them have been turned into day-schools,
giving a complete education to thousands of boys and
girls of the better class. The latest large endowment,
that of Sir William Fettes for the children of necessitous
families, was applied to building a sumptuous pile,
handed over per saltum to the upper class as a seminary
on the model of English public schools, which only in
the course of generations came so far from the intention
42
LOCH ACHRAY, THE TROSSACHS,
PERTHSHIRE
Auld Reekie
of their pious founders. This competition has but set
on their mettle the once " New " Academy, for the best
part of a century the chief school in Scotland, and the
old High School that nursed so many generations of
distinguished Scotsmen.
So, as at Bedford, where marriageable damsels complain
of the him s as being either too ancient or too modern,
the population of the Scottish capital is increased by
a selection of retired family-fathers, and a swarm of
youngsters who appear to thrive on the easterly winds
and haars. This hint about the weather is let slip
unhappily, since I am about to put forward a bold
pretension for " mine own romantic town," in a character
not obviously associated with it. In case of seeming too
presumptuous on its behalf, I will quote from Black's
Guide to Edinburgh, which ought to be well informed on
such matters : —
" In the holiday season, when Edinburgh is deserted by the
upper class of its inhabitants, why should it not be sought as
a pleasant change by the inhabitants of more grimy cities or less
inspiring scenes ? It may seem strange to mention the capital
of Scotland as a health resort ; yet, when one comes to think
of it, c Auld Reekie ' has more claim to this extra title than many
less famous places which flourish in full reputation for gay and
picturesque salubrity. The fact is, that had Edinburgh not been
a great city, it might well be a Clifton or a Scarborough, and
its ancient dignity need not be allowed to overshadow its
other merits. To begin with, the climate is airy and bracing,
notoriously rather too much so at most seasons, but the sea-
breezes cool the heat of summer, and the moderate rainfall is
soon carried off on the sloping streets. Practically it stands
on the sea, the shore being hardly farther from the centre of
43
Bonnie Scotland
Edinburgh than from some parts of Brighton. By train or
tram one can run down at any hour to Portobello, where are
sands, donkeys, crowds, bathing-machines, pleasure-boats, and
ornamental pier to satisfy the most fastidious Margateer. At
Craiglockhart, a mile or so from the outskirts of the town, there
is a first-class hydropathic establishment, nestling under the wild
scenery of the Pcntland Hills. Nor is mineral water wanting,
if that be desired. In the valley of the Water of Leith, below
the stately mansions of Moray Place, a sulphurous spring may
be found dispensed in a little classical temple that elsewhere
would pass for a creditable pump-room, though many citizens of
Edinburgh, perhaps, know nothing about it. Bands play almost
daily in one or other of the parks ; and even nigger minstrels, no
doubt, might be found, if that feature seemed indispensable to
the character of a holiday resort. There is no want of theatrical
and other performances. Then, as we have shown, few cities
are so well off for coach, steamboat, and railway excursions which
would bring one back in a day from a round through half of
Scotland."
44
CHAPTER III
THE TROSSACHS ROUND
BEYOND Edinburgh, perhaps the best known town in
Scotland is Stirling, which hordes of pilgrims pass in the
round trip of a single day through the famous Trossachs
District, displaying such a finely mixed assortment of
Scottish scenery, lochs, woods, and mountains
that like giants stand
To sentinel enchanted land.
Stirling, on the edge of the Highlands, played a central
part, even long after the Scottish kings had been drawn
down to the rich fields of Lothian and the Merse. From
the rock on which the Castle stands, only less boldly than
that of Edinburgh, one looks over the Links of Forth,
making such sinuous meanderings upon its Carse, and
across to the Ochil Hills that border Fife ; then from
another point of view appear the rugged Bens among
which Roderick Dhu had his strongholds. Not fair
prospects alone are tourists* attraction to Stirling. The
palace of James V., the houses of great nobles like
Argyll and Mar, the execution place of the last Roman
Catholic Archbishop of Scotland, the memorials of Pro-
testant martyrs, the proud monuments of Bruce and
45
Bonnie Scotland
Wallace, the ruins of Cambuskenneth Abbey, with its
royal sepulchre, all show this region the heart of mediaeval
Scottish history. While Edinburgh grew to be recognised
as the capital, Stirling Castle was the birthplace and the
favourite residence of several among the James Stuarts
that came to such an uneasy crown in boyhood ; some-
times it was their prison or their school of sanguinary
politics, when possession of the royal person counted as
ace in the game played by truculently treacherous nobles.
It has the distinction of being the last British castle to
stand a siege, raised in 1746 by the Duke of Cumberland,
when, as his panegyrical historian says, " in the Space of
one single Week, his Royal Highness quitted the Court
of the King his Father, put himself at the head of his
Troops in Scotland, and saw the Enemy flying with Pre-
cipitation before him, so that it may be said that his
progress was like Lightning, the rebels fled at the flash,
fearing the Thunder that was to follow." Its ramparts
look down on Scotland's dearest battlefields, that where
Wallace ensnared the invader at the Old Bridge, and that
of Bannockburn, when Bruce turned the flower of English
chivalry to dust and to gold, for, as the latest historian
says, " it rained ransoms " in Scotland after this profitable
victory.
One may speculate what might have been the fate of
the United Kingdom had Bannockburn ended otherwise.
Would the barons of the north have found a master in
Edward III. ? Would the Plantagenets, with Scotland to
back them, have made good their conquest of France ?
Would the stern reformers across the Tweed have suffered
the Tudors to shape and re -shape the Church as they
46
STIRLING CASTLE FROM THE KING S KNOT
The Trossachs Round
did ? Would the Scottish adventurers who once kept
their swords sharp as soldiers of fortune all over Europe,
have sooner found a career in forcing themselves to the
front of British society ? This much seems clear, that
there has been a woeful waste of ill-blood before a union
that came about after all, in the way of peace. Yet are
we so made that the most philosophic Scot, even fresh
from a course of John Stuart Mill or Herbert Spencer,
cannot look down upon these battle-grounds without a
throb in his heart. It was Bannockburn that made us
a nation, poor but free to be ourselves. Then, since
we did not always come off so well in our battles with
England, naturally we make much of the points won in a
doubtful game. When I was at school there came among
us perfervid young Scots an English boy, before whom, we
agreed, it would be courteous and kind not to mention
Bannockburn. Yet in the end some itching tongue let
slip this moving name, but without ruffling our new
comrade's pride. It turned out that he complacently
took Bannockburn to have been an English victory ; at
all events, one more or less made no great matter to his
thinking. Englishmen take their own national trophies
so much for granted, that they are apt to forget the
susceptibilities of other peoples. Such a one was rebuked
by a coachman driving him over the field of Bannockburn.
" You Scotch are always boasting of your country, but
when you come south you are in no hurry to get back
again." With thumb pointed to the ground, the Scot
made stern answer : " There was thirty thousand o' you
cam north, and no mahny o' them went back again ! "
There are other battlefields about Stirling, of which
47
Bonnie Scotland
Scotland has no such title to be proud, as that of Falkirk,
where Wallace brought his renown to a falling market
and Prince Charles Edward had but half a victory ; that
of Sauchieburn, where James III. was foully slain ; and
that of Sheriffmuir, the Culloden of 1715.
Let us hang a little longer upon the Castle ramparts to
take a bird's-eye view of the stirring story that often came
to centre round this rock. Over Highland mountain and
Lowland strath the clouds lift away, giving here and there
a doubtful glimpse of Scots from Ireland, Celts from who
knows how far, Britons of Strathclyde, and dim Picts of
the east, each such a wild race as " slew the slayer and
shall himself be slain," among whom intrude Roman
legions and Norse pirates, the former falling back from
their thistly conquest, the latter settling themselves firmly
on the coasts. Out of this welter, as out of the Heptarchy
in the south, emerges a more or less dominant kingdom
seated on the Tay. While the power of the Scots seems
to have gone under, their name floats at the top, so as to
christen the new nation, that on the south side, from the
wide bounds of Northumbria, takes in a stable element
destined to be the cement of the whole.
The next act shows the struggle of a partly Saxonised
people against the Anglo-Norman kings and their claims
to feudal superiority. The curtain rises on a sensational
melodrama of confused alarms and excursions, where the
ill-drilled Celtic supernumeraries at the back of the stage
often fall to fighting like wild cats among themselves,
while the mail-clad barons prance now on one side and
now on the other, as the scenes shift about a border-line
almost rubbed out by the crossing and recrossing of
48
THE OUTFLOW OF LOCH KATRINE,
PERTHSHIRE
The Trossachs Round
armies. The heroes of the most thrilling tableaux are
Wallace and Bruce ; and the loudest applause hails the
culminating blaze of lime-light on Bannockburn.
The wars of Independence are not yet at an end, but
the Scots people have learned more or less firmly to stand
together, and their chiefs, when not led astray by feud
and treachery, begin to enter into the spirit of the piece,
in which France now takes a leading part. But Banquo's
ill-fortune dogs the line not yet fully consecrated by
misfortune. Over the stage passes that woeful procession
of boy kings, most of them cut off before they had
learned to rule, each leaving his son to be in turn kid-
napped and tutored by fierce nobles to whom John Knox
might well have preached on the text ct Woe to thee,
O land, when thy king is a child ! " more profitably than he
denounced that " monstrous regiment of women." This
act culminates in the Reformation, when for a generation
Scotland is not clear whether to cry " Unhand me,
villain ! " to France, or to England, the two powers that
at her side play Codlin and Short in a tragic mask.
When James VI. had posted off to his richer
inheritance, we might expect an idyllic transformation
scene of peace out of pain. But the Scot has no turn for
peace. Is it the mists and east winds that set such a keen
edge on his temper ? When not at loyal war, he is
robbing and raiding his neighbours, as if to keep his hand
in ; and if no strife be stirring at home, he hires himself
out as a professional fighter or football player over foreign
countries and counties, for pelf indeed, but also for the
zest of the game. And now that Scotland has no longer
its wonted national exercise of defending itself against
49 7
Bonnie Scotland
England, it developed at home that notable taste for
spiritual combat ; so the next act has for its main interest
a controversy as to what things were Cassar's, throughout
which the hard-headed and hot-hearted theologians of the
north made fitful efforts to be loyal to Caesar, who, on
his part, gave them little cause for loyalty.
With the Revolution Settlement and the Act of Union
the stage appears cleared for a happy denouement, which,
indeed, but for episodes of rebellion and vulgar grudges
on both sides, comes on at length as the two rivals learn
how after all they are not hero and villain, but long-lost
brothers, the one rich and proud but generous, the other
poor and honest. Already, before the world's footlights, we
see them fallen into each other's arms, blessed by nature
and fortune, to the music of " Rule, Britannia," amid the
cheers of a crowd of colonies, though foreign spectators
may shrug their shoulders and twirl their moustaches
when invited to applaud.
But may there not be an epilogue to the sensational
acts of Scottish history? As Saxondom overcame the
plaided and kilted clans, is not Scotland in turn
destined to overlie the rest of the island ? Here we
approach a delicate subject of consideration. In this
enlightened age when, as a great Scotsman says, "the
Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne
about with more or less effect for five thousand years and
upwards," the truly philosophic mind should be capable
of rising above the pettiness of national prejudice. Only
foolish and uninstructed persons can cling to the belief that
their peculiar community, large or small, is necessarily
identified with the highest excellences of creation. Wise
50
IN THE HEART OF THE TROSSACHS,
PERTHSHIRE
The Trossachs Round
men agree to recognise that as a poor vanity which
winks fondly at the halo consecrating its own faults,
while blind to the plainest merits of its neighbours.
Excesses, defects, and compensations must be everywhere
recognised and allowed for, then at last we can take a
calm and exact account of human nature in its different
manifestations regarded by the light of impartial candour.
And when in such a judicious spirit we come to survey
mankind from China to Peru, there can surely be little
doubt as to the due place of Scots in the broken clan of
Me Adam.
The above edifying principles were earnestly enforced
upon me by a French savant with whom I once travelled
in the Desert of Sahara, who yet almost foamed at the
mouth if one pointed the moral with a Prussian helmet-
spike. Hitherto, alas ! international characterisations have
been coarse work, usually touched with a spice of malice.
Every parish flatters itself by locating Gotham just over its
boundary, as any county may have some unkind reproach
against its neighbours, Wiltshire moon-rakers, Hampshire
hogs, or what not ; and nations, too, bandy satirical epithets,
like those of a certain poet —
France is the land of sober common-sense,
And Spain of intellectual eminence.
In Russia there are no such things as chains ;
Supreme at Rome enlightened reason reigns.
Unbounded liberty is Austria's boast,
And iron Prussia is as free — almost.
America, that stationary clime,
Boasts of tradition and the olden time.
England, the versatile and gay,
Rejoices in theatrical display.
51
Bonnie Scotland
The sons of Scotia are impulsive, rash,
Infirm of purpose, prodigal of cash.
But Paddy
But, indeed, the rest is too scandalous for publication.
The most marked feature of the Scottish national
character is perhaps an engaging modesty that forbids me
to dwell on the achievements of a small country's thin
population, who have written so many names so widely
over the world. But it must be admitted how the King
of Great Britain sits on his throne in virtue of the Scottish
blood that exalted a " wee bit German lairdie." Our men
of light and leading are naturally Scotsmen, the leaders of
both parties in the House of Commons, for instance.
Since Disraeli — himself sprung from the Chosen People of
the old Dispensation — Lord Salisbury was our only Premier
not a Scotsman. Both the present Archbishops of the
Anglican Church come from Presbyterian Scotland. The
heads of other professions in England usually are or ought
to be Scotsmen. The United States Constitution seems
to require an amendment permitting the President to be
a born Scot ; but such names as Adams, Polk, Scott, Grant,
McClellan, and McKinley have their significance in the
history of that country, while in Canada, of course, Mac
has come to mean much what Pharaoh did in Egypt. It is
believed that no Scotsman has as yet been Pope ; but there
appears a sad falling away in the Catholic Church since
its earliest Fathers were well known as sound Presbyterians.
The first man mentioned in the Bible was certainly a Scot,
though English jealousy seeks to disguise him as James I.
Your "beggarly Scot" has the Apostles as accomplices
in what Englishmen look on as his worst sin, a vice of
52
BRIG O TURK AND BEN VENUE,
PERTHSHIRE
The Trossachs Round
poverty which, in the fulness of time, he begins to live
down. Both Major and Minor Prophets deal with their
Ahabs and Jezebels much in the tone of John Knox. A
legend, not lightly to be despised, makes our ancestress
Scota, Pharaoh's daughter ; but I do not insist on a possible
descent from the lost Tribes of Israel. Noah is recorded as
the first Covenanter. Cain and Abel appear to have started
the feud of Highlander and Lowlander. Father Adam is
certainly understood to have worn the kilt. The Royal
Scots claim to have furnished the guard over the Garden
of Eden, in which case unpleasing questions are suggested
as to the duties of the Black Watch at that epoch. The
name of Eden was at one time held to fix the site of
Paradise in the East Neuk of Fife ; but the higher criticism
inclines to Glasgow Green. In the south of Lanark, indeed,
are four streams that have yielded gold ; but they compass
a country more abounding in lead, and the climate seems
not congenial to fruit trees. " I confess, my brethren,"
said the controversial divine, "that there is a difficulty
here ; but let us look it boldly in the face, and pass on."
The antiquities of Stirling contrast with the modern
trimness of its neighbour, the Bridge of Allan, lying at
the foot of the Ochils two or three miles off, a Leaming-
ton to the Scottish Warwick, the tramway between them
passing the hill on which, to humble southron tourists,
Professor Blackie and other ardent patriots reared that tall
Wallace Monument whose interior makes a Walhalla of
memorials to eminent Scotsmen like Carlyle and Gladstone.
Bridge of Allan is a place of mills and bleach works, and
of resort for its Spa of saline water, recommended, too, by
its repute for a mild spring climate, rare in the north.
53
Bonnie Scotland
The " Bridge," which we have so often in Scottish place-
names, points to a time when bridges were not matters
of course ; as in the Highlands we shall find " Boats "
recording a more backward stage of ferries. This bridge
spans the wooded "banks of Allan Water," up which
a pleasant path leads one to Dunblane, with the Ochil
moorlands for its background.
Dunblane is notable for one of the few Gothic
cathedrals still used in Scotland as a parish church.
Sympathetically restored, it has even become the scene of
forms of worship which scandalised true-blue Presbyterians,
while on the other hand I once came across an Anglican
lady much shocked to find how "actually there was a
Presbyterian service going on 1 " Carved screen, stalls,
and communion table make ornaments seldom seen in the
bareness of a northern kirk, this one admirable in its pro-
portions and mouldings, if without the elaborate decora-
tion of Melrose. It has a valuable legacy in the library
of a divine well known in both countries, the tolerant
Archbishop Leighton.
Among Scotsmen, Dunblane enjoys a modest repute
as a place of villeggiatura ; to tourists it is perhaps best
known as junction of the Caledonian line to Oban, which
brings them to Callander, a few miles from the Trossachs.
This line at first follows the course of the Teith,
" daughter of three mighty lakes," past Doune Castle,
not Burns's " Bonnie Doon," but an imposing monument
of feudal struggles and crimes, that has housed many a
royal guest, if not, as one of its parish ministers gravely
declares for unquestionable, Fitz-James himself on the
night before his adventurous chase. So late as 1745,
54
BIRCHES BY LOCH ACHRAY, PERTHSHIRE
The Trossachs Round
Home, the author of Douglas •, had an adventure here,
confined as prisoner of war in a Jacobite dungeon, from
which he escaped, with five fellow-captives, in quite
romantic style ; and this, we know, was one of the stages
of Captain Edward Waverley's journey. Farther up
the river, another place of note is Cambusmore, where
Scott spent the youthful holidays that made him familiar
with the Trossachs country. Callander he does not
mention, its name not fitting into his metre, whereas its
neighbour Dunblane's amenity to rhyme brought to be
planted there a flower of song at the hands of a writer
who perhaps knew it only by name. But Callander has
grown into a snug little town of hotels and lodging-houses
below most lovely scenery, little spoiled by the chain of
lakes above being harnessed as water-works for thirsty
Glasgow, whose Bailie Nicol Jarvies now lord it over the
country of Rob Roy and Roderick Dhu.
Another way to the Trossachs is by "the varied
realms of fair Menteith," through which a railway joins
the banks of the Forth and the Clyde. The name of
Menteith has an ugly association to Scottish ears through
Sir John Menteith, a son of its earl, who betrayed
Wallace to the English ; the signal for these Philistines*
onrush was given by his turning a loaf upside down, and
so to handle bread was long an insult to any man of the
execrated name. Sir John afterwards fought under Bruce ;
but however Scottish nobles might change sides in the
game of feudal allegiance, the Commons were always true
to patriotic resentment ; and no services of that house
have quite wiped out the memory of a traitor remembered
as Gan among the peers of Charlemagne or Simon Girty
55
Bonnie Scotland
on the backwoods frontier of America. And fortune
seems to have concurred in the popular verdict, for till
even the shadow of it died out in a wandering beggar,
little luck went with the title of Menteith, least of all in
a claim to legitimate heirship of the Crown ; then this
earldom seemed doubly cursed when transferred to the
Grahams, one of whom was ringleader in the murder
of James I.
Menteith, one of the chief provinces of old Scotland,
has shrunk to the name of a district described in a witty
booklet by a son of the soil, far travelled in other lands.1
"A kind of sea of moss and heath, a bristly country
(Trossachs is said to mean the bristled land) shut in by
hills on every side," in which " nearly every hill and
strath has had its battles between the Grahams and the
Macgregors " ; but now " over the Fingalian path, where
once the red-shank trotted on his Highland garron, the
bicyclist, the incarnation of the age, looks to a sign-post
and sees This hill is dangerous" Its stony fields and
lochans lying between hummocks are horizoned by grand
mountains, among which Ben Lomond, to the west, is the
dominating feature, " in winter, a vast white sugar-loaf ;
in summer, a prismatic cone of yellow and amethyst and
opal lights ; in spring, a grey, gloomy, stony pile of
rocks ; in autumn, a weather indicator ; for when the
mist curls down its sides, and hangs in heavy wreaths
from its double summit * it has to rain/ as the Spaniards
t»
say.
Menteith became a resort before Callander, when, early
in the eighteenth century, we find Clerk of Penicuik taking
1 Notes on the District of Menteith, by R. B. Cunninghame Graham.
56
HEAD OF LOCH LOMOND, LOOKING UP GLEN FALLOCH,
PERTHSHIRE
The Trossachs Round
his family there on a u goat's whey campaign," for which
remedy the Highland borders were often visited in his
day. At an earlier day, canny Lowlanders would be shy
of trusting themselves, on business or pleasure, beyond
the Forth ; and, even later, we know how Bailie Nicol
Jarvie thought twice before venturing into the haunts of
that "honest" kinsman of his. As Ben Lomond dominates
this landscape, so looms out the memory of Rob Roy
Macgregor, that doughty outlaw who, like Robin Hood,
has taken such hold on popular imagination. Graham as
he is, one suspects the above-quoted representative of the
old earls to have his heart with an ancestral enemy who
practised a kind of wild socialism —
To spoil the spoiler as he may,
And from the robber rend the prey.
It appears that Scott had Rob Roy in his eye as
a model for Roderick Dhu, and it is the Macgregor
country which he has given to his fictitious Vich Alpines.
Mr. Cunninghame Graham points out how the Highland
borders were always more troubled than the interior
clandom, and how here especially the vicinity of a rich
lowland offered constant temptation for followers of the
" good old rule, the simple plan " recorded by Words-
worth. The Forth made a boundary against these predatory
excursions, yet sometimes a Roderick Dhu would harry
fields and farms as far as the home of " poor Blanche of
Devon," beyond Stirling. The "red soldiers" in turn
came to pass the Highland line. On Ellen's Isle women
and children took refuge from Cromweirs men ; Monk
marched by Aberfoyle, noting for destruction its woods
57 8
Bonnie Scotland
that harboured rebels ; and not to speak of Captain
Thornton's unlucky expedition, no less authentic a hero
than Wolfe once commanded the fortress which the Georges
placed at Inversnaid, near Rob Roy's home, to bridle that
broken clan of Ishmaelites.
The railway, from Glasgow or from Stirling, passes to
the south of the Loch of Menteith, with its islands, to
which a short divagation might be made. Here, on the
" Isle of Rest," shaded by giant chestnuts which tradition
brings from Rome, are the ruins of a cloister whither the
child Queen Mary was carried for refuge after the battle of
Pinkie, before setting out for France with her playmate
maids of honour.
Last night the Queen had four Marys,
To-night she'll have but three ;
There was Mary Beaton and Mary Seaton
And Mary Carmichael and me.
Mary Livingston was the authentic fourth of the
quartette in those days, and Mary Fleming held the place
of Mary Carmichael. The luckless heroine of this touch-
ing ballad was a Mary Hamilton supposed by Scott to
have been one of the Queen's attendants later on, but her
identity is somewhat dubious ; and one writer shows
reason to believe that the story of her crime and punish-
ment has been strangely shifted from the Russian Court
of Peter the Great, where she might well exclaim —
Ah ! little did my minnie think,
The night she cradled me
The lands that I should travel in,
The death that I should dee !
Beyond this lake a railway branch brings us to
58
GOLDEN AUTUMN, THE TROSSACHS,
PERTHSHIRE
The Trossachs Round
Aberfoyle, on the banks of the " infant Forth," its nursery
name the Avon Dhu, " Blackwater," haunted like a child's
dreams by fairies of whom prudent Bailie Nicol Jarvie
spoke under his breath, though he professed to hold
them as " deceits of Satan." Here the change-house of
Lucky M'Alpine has been replaced by an hotel offering
all the comforts of the Saltmarket, along with golf links
and fishing at Loch Ard. As Ipswich shows the very
room in the White Hart occupied by Mr. Pickwick and
the green gate at which Sam Weller met Job Trotter, so
among the lions here are the ploughshare valiantly handled
by Bailie Nicol Jarvie, nay, even the identical bough from
which he swung suspended by his coat tails. Such relics
let one guess why that worthy citizen would not give
" the finest sight in the Hielands for the first keek o' the
Gorbals of Glasgow ! " But he might have taken another
view had he seen the great slate quarries that now scar
the braes of Aberfoyle, or that pleasure-house on Loch
Katrine set apart for Glasgow magistrates to disport
themselves at the source of their city's water supply.
From Aberfoyle or from Callander, the rest of the
journey is by road to the Trossachs Hotel, which seems to
represent Fitz-James's imagination of " lordly tower " or
"cloister grey"; then on through the mile of bristling
pass to the foot of Loch Katrine. How many a peaceful
stranger has passed this way since the Knight of Snowdoun's
steed here " stretched his stiff limbs to rise no more " !
What " cost thy life, my gallant grey " would be the fact
that even in the poet's day, the path to Ellen's Isle was
more like a ladder than a road. Now the danger most
to be feared is from Sassenach cycling, which caused a coach
59
Bonnie Scotland
accident in the vicinity a few years ago. Umbrellas had
replaced claymores so far back as Wordsworth's time ; and
waterproofs are the armour most displayed, where once
Refluent through the pass of fear
The battle's tide was pour'd ;
Vanish'd the Saxon's struggling spear,
Vanish'd the mountain-sword.
As Bracklinn's chasm, so black and steep,
Receives her roaring linn,
As the dark caverns of the deep
Suck the wild whirlpool in,
So did the deep and darksome pass
Devour the battle's mingled mass :
None linger now upon the plain,
Save those who ne'er shall fight again.
Macaulay, in his slap -dash style, has explained the
want of taste for the picturesque in a bailie or such like
of more romantic times. " He is not likely to be thrown
into ecstasies by the abruptness of a precipice from which
he is in imminent danger of falling two thousand feet
perpendicular ; by the boiling waves of a torrent which
suddenly whirls away his baggage and forces him to run
for his life ; by the gloomy grandeur of a pass where he
finds a corpse which marauders have just stripped and
mangled ; or by the screams of those eagles whose next
meal may probably be on his own eyes." But Dr. Hume
Brown (Early Travellers in Scotland) shows how there
were bold and not unappreciative tourists in the Highlands
before the era of return tickets. Whatever the guide-
books say, it is certainly not the case that the Trossachs
were discovered by Scott. In Dr. T. Garnett's Tour
through the Highlands, published 1800, he relates a visit
60
THE RIVER TEITH, WITH LOCHS ACHRAY AND
VENNACHAR, PERTHSHIRE
The Trossachs Round
to the "Drosacks," and speaks of the place as sought
out by foreigners. Several years before the publication
of the Lady of the Lake, Wordsworth, with Coleridge
and his sister, on a Scottish tour, turned aside to this
beauty-spot, which they duly admired in spite of the rain ;
and there they met a drawing-master from Edinburgh on
the same picturesque-hunting errand. Dorothy Words-
worth 's Journal tells us how the cottars were amused to
hear of their secluded home being known in England ;
how two huts had been erected by Lady Perth for the
accommodation of visitors ; and how a dozen years before
the minister of Callander had published an account of the
Trossachs as a scene " that beggars all description."
The bad weather proved too much for Coleridge, who
turned back from the tour here ; and his muse seems not
to have been inspired by this land of the mountain which
he found also a land of the flood. Wordsworth, however,
made several attempts to annex Scotland to his native
domain. Truth to tell, the lake poet's harp sounds some-
times out of tune across the Border, as witness his woeful
travesty of the " Helen of Kirkconnel " story, and the
philosophic considerations which he attributes to Rob Roy
over what may have been that bold outlaw's grave. There
is one verse in his "Highland Reaper" which seems a
perfect epitome of the future Laureate's qualities, who,
if he " uttered nothing base," could come too near being
commonplace. " Will no one tell me what she sings ? " is
surely in the flat tone which one irreverent critic describes
as a " bleat." " Perhaps the flaintive numbers flow " — is
not this the false gallop of eighteenth-century verse, out
of which Wordsworth vainly believed that he had broken
61
Bonnie Scotland
his Pegasus ? But in such pinchbeck setting, what a pearl
of price —
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago !
Thus to him, too, "Caledonia stern and wild" could
breathe her secret, while to put life into the raids and
combats of long ago was for another bard who plays drum
and trumpet in the orchestra of British poetry. I am not
going to string vain epithets on the Trossachs, familiar to
all readers if only from the pages of their great advertiser.
But let me hint to tourists who come duly furnished with
the Lady of the Lake, that Black's Guide to the Trossachs
includes an excellent commentary on the poem from what
may seem an unpoetical source, the pen of an Astronomer-
Royal, Sir G. B. Airey, whose topographical analysis will
be found most instructive. These scenes appear some-
what trimmed since an old writer described the Highlands
" as a part of the creation left undrest." The lake edges
have been smoothed off, as the " unfathomable glades " of
the Trossachs are opened up by a road, below the line
of the old pass and the hill tracks by which the Fiery
Cross was sped towards Strath-Ire.
For an account of this country as it is in our day, we
may refer to a French story by a writer named, of all
names, Andre Laurie, whose native heath ought to be the
bonny braes of Maxwelton. This book has the serious
purpose of giving a view of English school athletics, and
pointing the moral that Frenchmen so trained would be
all the fitter for la revanche. The hero, sent to school in
England, is, as part of his educational course, taken by
the schoolmaster on a shooting excursion in the High-
62
VEILED SUNSHINE, THE TROSSACHS,
PERTHSHIRE
The Trossachs Round
lands. They put up at the White Heart, one of the
principal hotels of Glascow, and the landlord is so inter-
ested in their bold enterprise that he personally conducts
them on the chasse am grouses. Nay more, he equips
them with a pack of piebald pointers, well trained to
retrieve in water, which he had come by in a remarkable
manner : a certain Lord Stilton, breakfasting at the hotel,
with true British generosity made his host a present of
these matchless hounds by way of largesse for an excellent
dish of trout — a rare treat, it seems, in this part of the
world.
The first day's proceedings of the sporting troop are
most notable. They " leave the civilised country " at
Renfrew. How they get across the Clyde does not appear ;
but there are no doubt stepping-stones in all Highland
streams. Having thus invaded the Lennox, they forth-
with stalk its desolate moors from Loch Lomond to Loch
Katrine, where as a touch of local colour the author is
careful to point out that one must not use the word lakes.
Nine or ten strong, the company is thrown out in
skirmishing order, those who have guns marching in front
behind the dogs, while the unarmed members are invited
to bring up the rear "as simple spectators." Scotland
being such a proverbially hospitable country, they do not
judge it necessary to provide themselves with leave or
license, but their hotel-keeper for two or three shillings
hires a bare-legged shepherd in " a short petticoat " to
show them where the game lies. In spite of this liberality,
towards the end of the day the bag amounts only to three
or four head, including one hare, explained to be a rara
avis hereabouts, and one fierce bull which has given a
63
Bonnie Scotland
spice of danger to their sport. In the evening, however,
the grouse begin to " rise," spring up " every instant under
their feet," and nearly two dozen are brought down,
enough to serve for supper. The question of lodging
presents more difficulty, the Trossachs being an "ab-
solutely desert " country without a village for six leagues
round ; but the whole party are comfortably accommo-
dated in a fisherman's hut, fifteen to twenty feet square,
which must have been a tight fit for ten, even though
there was no furniture beyond a table, two benches and a
sheepskin. With genuine Scottish pride the fisherman
refuses to accept a bawbee from his guests ; though rather
too much given to " bird's eye tobacco " and " that
abominable product of civilisation Scotch whisky," he is
a superior person, by his parents designed for the national
church, but the honour of " wearing a surplice," it is ex-
plained, had not seemed to him worth the frequent birch-
ing which makes the discipline of parish schools in the
north.
Next day, for a change, the strangers give themselves
up to the kindred sport of angling ; and two of them
undertake the Alpine ascent of one of the peaks above
Loch Katrine, but, without a guide, come to sore
grief, and have to be rescued by a search party led by
those sagacious pointers in true Ben St. Bernard style. In
such cases, our author points out " the superiority of the
savage over the civilised man, at least in the desert."
Only to the Highland fisherman had it occurred that those
luckless adventurers might want something to eat ; but
he, taught by experience, produces in the nick of time a
bottle of whisky, a biscuit and a slice of bacon ; and thus
64
Bonnie Scotland
spice of danger to their sport. In the evening, however,
the grouse begin to " rise," spring up " every instant under
their feet," and nearly two dozen are brought down,
enough to serve for supper. The question of lodging
presents more difficulty, the Trossachs being an "ab-
solutely desert " country without a village for six leagues
round ; but the whole party are comfortably accommo-
dated in a fisherman's hut, fifteen to twenty feet square,
which must have been a tight fit for ten, even though
there was no furniture beyond a table, two benches and a
sheepskin. With genuine Scottish pride the fisherman
refuses to accept a bawbee from his guests ; though rather
too much given to "bird's eye tobacco" and "that
abominable product of civilisation Scotch whisky," he is
a superior person, by his parents designed for the national
church, but the honour of " wearing a surplice," it is ex-
plained, had not seemed to him worth the frequent birch-
ing which makes the discipline of parish schools in the
north.
Next day, for a change, the strangers give themselves
up to the kindred sport of angling ; and two of them
undertake the Alpine ascent of one of the peaks above
Loch Katrine, but, without a guide, come to sore
grief, and have to be rescued by a search party led by
those sagacious pointers in true Ben St. Bernard style. In
such cases, our author points out " the superiority of the
savage over the civilised man, at least in the desert."
Only to the Highland fisherman had it occurred that those
luckless adventurers might want something to eat ; but
he, taught by experience, produces in the nick of time a
bottle of whisky, a biscuit and a slice of bacon ; and thus
64
NEAR ARDLUI, LOCH LOMOND,
DUMBARTONSHIRE
The Trossachs Round
the perishing hero's life is saved to " dance a Scottish
gigue " — O M. Laurie, M. Laurie, O !
The dancing comes through a luxurious experience of
Highland high-life, when this band of youths fall in with
an old schoolfellow, a Scottish nobleman who bears what
seems the exotic tide of Lord Camember, but his family
name is that well-known aristocratic one of Orton. He
welcomes them to his castle, where his coming of age is
being celebrated by crowds strangely enormous for such a
" desert country," who are entertained under tents " vast
as cathedrals," with splendid hospitality open to all comers,
fountains flowing with beer, speeches, music, dancing, and
fireworks. As bouquet of the festivities, he invites the
strangers to a review of his stags, driven together " in full
trot " till their gigantic antlers " gave the illusion of the
marching forest in the Macbeth legend." The drive past
lasts more than an hour, in the course of which are
enumerated 5947 horns, so that, allowing for absentees,
the young lord estimates a round number of seven thousand
as the stock of his deer forest. There could have been
no such head of game in the district when Fitz- James
galloped all the way from the Earn to Loch Katrine after
one stag, losing it as well as his way. One can't help
feeling that our author's excursion through the scenes of
his story must have been an equally rapid one.
The Trossachs pass leads us to that lake that gets a
fair-seeming name not from any saint, but from the High-
land Caterans who once infested its banks ; and it is hinted
that " Ellen's Isle" may have come to be christened through
Scott's mistaking the Gaelic word Eilean (island). There
was, indeed, a certain Helen Stuart who played a grimly
65 9
Bonnie Scotland
fierce part in defending this place of refuge, as related
in the poem, but her exploit was performed against
Cromwell's soldiers. In sight of the " Silver Strand/*
tourists are wont to take steamboat as far as Stronachlachar,
and there cross by coach to the " bonny, bonny banks of
Loch Lomond." They whose " free course" moves not by
" such fixed cause," might well hold on to the head of
Loch Katrine, crossing to Loch Lomond over the wild
heights of Glengyle ; or they would not find it amiss to
turn back to Aberfoyle, thence past Loch Ard and the
Falls of Ledard, following the track round Ben Lomond
on which Rob Roy led Osbaldistone and the Bailie out of
his country. But one knows not how to direct strangers
to that wild region vaguely outlined by the above-mentioned
French author, where our generation may shoot grouse and
bulls as they go, and find quarters in any convenient hut
or castle, when the Trossachs hotel happens to have "not
a bed for love or money." His story, one fears, must be
counted with the mediaeval wonders of Loch Lomond,
fish without fins, waves without wind, and such a floating
island as still emerges after hot summers in Derwentwater.
Dorothy Wordsworth, for one, rather belittles Loch
Katrine as an " Ulswater dismantled of its grandeur and
cropped of its lesser beauties," though she compliments
the upper part as "very pleasing, resembling Thirlmere
below Armboth." But no critic can carp at the fame of
Loch Lomond as the most beautiful lake in Scotland ; and
one author who, as a native of the Lennox, is not indeed
unprejudiced, Smollett to wit, gives it the palm over all
the lakes he has seen in Italy or Switzerland. Dr. Chalmers
wondered if there would not be a Loch Lomond in heaven.
66
••"'^te
THE SILVER STRAND, LOCH KATRINE,
PERTHSHIRE
The Trossachs Round
"A little Mediterranean " is the style given by a seventeenth-
century English tourist, Franck, to what Scott boldly
pronounces " one of the most surprising, beautiful, and
sublime spectacles in nature," its narrow upper fiord " lost
among dusky and retreating mountains," at the foot
opening into an archipelago of wooded islands, threaded
by steamboats, while up the western shore runs one of
the best cycling roads in the kingdom, past memorials of
Stuarts and Buchanans, Colquhouns and wild Macfar lanes.
On the other side are caves associated with the adventures
of Rob Roy, and spots sung by Wordsworth. And all
this wonderland is overshadowed by Ben Lomond, its
ascent easily made on foot or pony-back by a traveller not
bound to do this whole round in one day. But let him
beware of getting lost in the mist and having to spend all
night on the mountain, as was the lot of that New England
Sibyl, Margaret Fuller. Also he should not imitate a
facetious friend of mine who left his card in the cairn at
the top, and two or three days later received it enclosed in
this note : " Mr. Ben Lomond presents his compliments
to Mr. and begs to say that not only does his position
prevent him from returning visits, but he has no desire
for Mr. 's further acquaintance."
At the foot of Loch Lomond we regain the rails that
will carry us to Edinburgh, to Glasgow, to Stirling, or to
the western Highlands. The first stage is down the Vale
of Leven to Dumbarton, arx inexpugnabilis of old Scotland,
its name Dunbritton recording the older days when it was
the stronghold of a Cumbrian kingdom. Here the literary
genius loci is that not very ethereal shade Tobias Smollett,
who, born on the banks of Leven, has nothing to say of
Bonnie Scotland
the Trossachs, but looked back on the scene of Roderick
Random's pranks as an eighteenth-century Arcadia, that
could move him to a rare strain of sentiment in his " Ode
to Leven Water."
Devolving from thy parent lake,
A charming maze thy waters make,
By bowers of birch, and groves of pine,
And hedges flower'd with eglantine.
Still on thy banks, so gaily green,
May numerous herds and flocks be seen,
And lasses chanting o'er the pail,
And shepherds piping in the dale,
And ancient faith that knows no guile,
And industry embrown'd with toil,
And hearts resolved, and hands prepared,
The blessings they enjoy to guard.
68
LOCH ACHRAY AND BEN VENUE,
PERTHSHIRE
CHAPTER IV
THE KINGDOM OF FIFE
LIKE Somerset, claiming to be something more than a
mere shire, the county half fondly, half jestingly entitled
a kingdom, lies islanded between two firths, cut off from
the world by the sea and from the rest of Scotland by the
Ochil ridges. The " Fifers " are thus supposed to be a
race apart ; but it would be more like the truth to take
Fifeishness as the essence of Saxon Scotland. Fife is, in
fact, an epitome of the Lowlands, showing great stretches
of practically prosaic farming, others of grimy coal-field,
with patches of moor, bog, and wind-blown firs, here and
there swelling into hill features, that in the abrupt Lomonds
attain almost mountain dignity in face of their Highland
namesake, sixty miles away. Open to cold sea winds, it
nurses the hardy frames of " buirdly chiels and clever
hizzies" ; and all the invigorating discipline of the northern
climate is understood to be concentrated in the East Neuk
of Fife, where a weakling like R. L. Stevenson might well
sigh over the " flaws of fine weather that we call our
northern summer." It is in the late autumn that this
eastern coast is at its best of halcyon days. As we have
69
Bonnie Scotland
seen, the poet lived a little farther south who still laid
himself open to Tom Hood's reproach —
1 Come, gentle spring, ethereal mildness come ! '
O Thomson, void of rhyme as well as reason,
How could'st thou thus poor human nature hum —
There's no such season !
In the Antiquary s period, we know how Fife was reached
from Edinburgh by crossing the Firth at Queensferry, as
old as Malcolm Canmore's English consort, or by the
longer sail from Leith to Kinghorn, where Alexander III.
broke his neck to Scotland's woe. A more roundabout
land route was via Stirling, chosen by prudent souls like
the old wife who, being advised to put her trust in
Providence for the passage, replied, " Na, na, sae lang as
there's a brig at Stirling I'll no fash Providence ! " Lord
Cockburn records how that conscientious divine, Dr John
Erskine, feeling it his duty to vote in a Fife election, when
too infirm to bear the motion of boat or carriage, arranged
to walk all the way by Stirling, but was saved this fort-
night's pilgrimage by the contest being given up. Till the
building of its Firth bridges, the North British Railway's
passengers had to tranship both in entering and leaving
Fife, a mild taste of adventure for small schoolboys. Now,
as all the world knows, the shores of Lothian are joined to
Fife by that monumental Forth Bridge that humps itself
into view miles away. Then all the world has heard of
the unlucky Tay Bridge, graceful but treacherous serpent
as it proved in its first form, when one stormy Sabbath
night it let a train be blown into the sea. By these con-
structions the line has now a clear course on which to race
its Caledonian rival, either for Perth or Aberdeen. But
70
THE CASTLE OF ST. ANDREWS, FIFESHIRE
The Kingdom of Fife
there is no racing done on the cobweb of North British
branches woven to catch Fife-farers, at whose junctions, as
a local statistician has calculated, the average Fifer wastes
one-seventh of his life or thereabouts. Ladybank Junction,
stranded on its moor, used to have the name of a specially
penitential waiting-place, which yet lent itself to romantic
account in one of those Tales from Blackwood.
The towns of Fife are many rather than much. Cupar,
the county seat, is still a quiet little place, whose Academy
stands on the site of a Macduff stronghold, recalling that
Thane of Fife with whom the Dukedom of our generation
is connected only in title. " He that maun to Cupar,
maun to Cupar," says the proverb, but few strangers seem
to risk this vague condemnation. When James Ray
passed through the town on his way to Culloden, he has
little to tell of it unless that he put up at the " Cooper's
Arms" which, more by token, was kept by the Widow
Cooper. The above proverb, by the way, seems to belong
to Coupar-Angus, usually so distinguished in spelling, and
is transferred to its namesake by " Cupar-justice," a Fife
version of the code honoured at Jedburgh. A Scotch
cooper or couper may not have to do with barrels, unless
indirectly in the way of business, but is also a chaffer or
chapman, par excellence, of horses ; and one would like to
believe, if philologists did not shake their heads, that these
towns got their name as markets, like English Chippings
and Cheaps.
In an out-of-the-way edge of the county, below the
Lomonds, lies Falkland, whose royal palace, restored by the
late Marquis of Bute, was the scene of that dubious tragedy
enacted in the Fair Maid of Perth, where the dissolute
7*
Bonnie Scotland
Duke of Rothesay is a little white-washed to heighten the
dramatic atrocity of his death. A few miles behind
Queensferry is Dunfermline, another place where kings
once sat "drinking the blood-red wine," now a thriving
seat of linen manufacture, among its mills and bleachfields
containing choice fragments of royal and ecclesiastical
architecture, as well as modern adornments given by its
bounteous son Mr. Andrew Carnegie, native of the town
where Charles I. was born, and Robert Bruce buried beside
Malcolm Canmore and his queen. There are some fine
modern monuments in the new church, which adjoins the
monastic old one, testifying stiffly to Presbyterian distrust
of Popish arts ; and altogether Dunfermline is one of those
places that might well " delay the tourist."
But the largest congregation in Fife is that " long town"
of Kirkcaldy, flourishing on jute and linoleum since the
days when Carlyle and Irving were dominies here, the
former a humane pedagogue, though he scourged grown-
up dunces so unmercifully, while the bygone peace of the
place was often broken by the wailing of Irving's pupils
under the tawse with which he sought to drive them into
unknown tongues. Kirkcaldy has older historic memories ;
but somehow it is one of those Scottish towns that, like
Peebles and Paisley, lend their names to vulgar or comic
associations. Was it not a bailie of Kirkcaldy who said,
<c What wi' a' thae schules and railways, ye canna' tell the
dufference atween a Scotchman and an Englishman noo-a-
days ! "
Let the above words be text for a sermon, to which I
invite seriously-minded readers, while the otherwise-minded
may amuse themselves by taking a daunder among the
72
The Kingdom of Fife
lions of Kirkcaldy. The subject is Scottish Humour,
which Englishmen are apt to rank with the snakes of Ice-
land or the breeks of a Highlander. Foreigners do not
make the same mistake, as how can they when the best
known English humorists are so often Scotsmen or Irish-
men ? It is the pure John Bull whose notions of the
humorous are apt to be rather childish ; so when he gets
hold of a joke like that about the surgical instrument, he
runs about squibbing it in everybody's face, and never
seems to grow tired of such a smart saying, nor cares to
ask if there be any truth in it beyond the fact that one
people may not readily relish another's wit or wisdom.
The vulgar of all nations have a very rudimentary
sense of the comic, coarse enough in many Scotsmen who
can appreciate no more pointed repartee than —
The never a word had Dickie to say,
Sae he ran the lance through his fause bodie !
The characteristic form of English humour is more or
less good-natured chaff, bearing the same relation to keen
raillery as a bludgeon does to a rapier. A master of this
fence was Dr. Johnson, who, if his pistol missed fire,
knocked you down with the butt end of it. Sydney
Smith's residence in Edinburgh should have given him
a finer style, which he turned to so unworthy use in
mocking at Scottish "wut." As to the distinction
between wit and humour, I know of no better than that
which defines the one as a flash, the other as an atmosphere.
It may be granted that the Scottish nature does not
coruscate in flashes. But what your Sydney Smiths do
not observe is that it develops a very high quality of
73 i°
Bonnie Scotland
humour, which has self-criticism as its essence. Know
thyself, has been styled the acme of wisdom ; and when
the Scotsman's best stories come to be analysed, the point
of them appears to be a more or less conscious making
fun of his own faults and shortcomings, which is a whole-
somer form of intellectual exercise than that parrot-trick
of nicknaming one's neighbours. The bailie's boast above
quoted is a characteristic instance over which an English-
man may chuckle without seeing the true force of it. All
those hoary Punch jests as to " bang went saxpence," and
so forth, are good old home-made Scottish stories, which
the southron brings back with him from their native
heath, and dresses them up for his own taste with a spice
of malice, then rejoices over the savoury dish which he has
prepared by seething poached kids in their mother's milk.
Yet often print fails to bring out the true gust that needs
a Doric tongue for sauce ; and the Englishman who
attempts any Scottish accent is apt to merit their fate who
ventured to meddle with the ark, not being of the tribe
of Judah. The effect of such a story depends as much
on the actor as on the words. To mention but one of
many noted masters of this art, who that ever spent an
evening with the late Sir Daniel Macnee, President of the
Scottish Academy, could hold the legendary view of his
countrymen's want of fun ? He had to be heard to be
appreciated ; but, at the risk of misrepresenting his gift,
here is one of his anecdotes. He was travelling with a
talkative oil merchant who, after much boast of his own
business, began to rally the other on his want of com-
municativeness— " Come now, what line are you in ? " —
" I'm in the oil trade too," confessed the painter, where*
74
The Kingdom of Fife
upon his companion fell to pressing him for an order. —
" We'll do cheaper for you than any house in the trade ! "
At last, to get rid of his persistency, Sir Daniel said, " I
don't mind taking a gallon from you." — "A gallon!
Man, ye Ye in a sma* way ! "
Perhaps this humour is a modern production, like
certain fruits cultivated in Scotland "with deeficulty."
There were times, indeed, when life here was no laughing
matter. But even the sun-loving vine is all the better
for a touch of frost at its roots, and the best wines are
not those the most easily made. In contrast with other
home-brewed fun that soon goes flat, and with such cheap
brands as " Joe Miller," the vintage of Scottish humour,
if not distinguished by effervescing spurts of fancy, has
body and character which only improve by age, keeping
well even when decanted, and giving a marked flavour
when mixed with less potent materials, into Punch, let us say.
There is also a dry quality thrown away on palates used
to the public-house tap ; Ally Sloper, for instance, might
not taste the womanthropy, as he would call it, of that
bachelor divine who began his discourse on the Ten
Virgins with " What strikes us here, my brethren, is the
unusually large proportion of wise Virgins." A good
Scotch story, with the real smack upon the tongue, bears
to be told again, like an aphorism distilled from the
wisdom of generations. Sound humour is but the seamy
side of common-sense, for a sense of the incongruous
degenerates into nonsense if not shaped by a clear eye
for the relation and proportion of things. If the reader
will consider the many specimens of Scottish humour
now current in England, or to be drawn from such
75
Bonnie Scotland
treasuries as Dean Ramsay's ; and if he will reflect on
their weight and minting, he may understand the value
of this coinage in the national life.
The northern Attic salt abounds in one savour that
appears in a hundred stories like that of the preacher
who, at Kirkcaldy or elsewhere, apologised for his want
of preparation : "I have been obliged to say what the
Lord put into my mouth, but next Sabbath I hope to
come better provided ! " If there is any subject which
the Scot takes seriously it is religion, that yet makes
the favourite theme of his jests. Revilers have gone so
far as to state that the incongruous elements of Scottish
humour are usually supplied by a minister and a whisky
bottle. It is certainly the case that a Scotsman relishes
playing upon the edge of sacred things, and that the
pillars of his church will shake their sides over stories
which strike Englishmen as irreverent. But has not
vigorous faith often shown a tendency to overflow into
backwaters of comicality, as in the gargoyles of our
cathedrals, the mediaeval parodies of church rites, and
the homely wit of Puritan preachers ? There are some
believers who can afford a laugh now and then at their
sturdy solemnities, others who must keep hush lest a
titter bring down their fane like a house of cards.
Familiarity with the language of the Bible counts for a
good deal in what seems the too free handling of it in the
north. But note how the irreverence of the Scot's humour
is usefully directed against his own tendency to fanaticism.
It is only of late years, I think, that he has taken to
joking on the religious practices of his neighbours, whose
shortcomings once seemed too serious for joking. That
LOCH LUBNAIG, PERTHSHIRE
The Kingdom of Fife
" one " of the servant girl who described the services at
Westminster Abbey as "an awful way of spending the
Sabbath " may be taken as a sign of growing charity.
Yet, in the past, too, a Scotsman seldom chuckled so
heartily as over any rebuke to priestly pretension within
his own borders. Jenny Geddes's rough form of re-
monstrance with the dignitary who would have read the
mass in her lug was a practical form of Scotch humour,
that on such subjects is apt to have a good deal of hard
earnest in it. As for the Kirk's own ministers, the
tyranny ascribed to them by Buckle has long been
tempered by stories at their expense. Buckle's famous
comparison of Spain and Scotland is vitiated by his leaving
out of account that natural sense of humour that has
aided popular instruction in counteracting superstition.
Dean Ramsay ekes out Carlyle and other weighty authors
who explain how Irving found no depth of earth in
Scotland for the seeds of his wild enthusiasm, and why
the tourist seeks in vain for winking Madonnas at
Kirkcaldy, long ago done with all relics and images but
the battered figureheads of her whalers.
Kirkcaldy 's whalers now grow legendary, and strangers
beholding her shipping to-day, may take for a northern
joke that this ranks as the third Scottish port of entry ;
but the fact is that a whole string of Fife harbours are
officially knotted together under its name, as all North
America was once tacked on to the manor of Greenwich,
and every British child born at sea belongs to the parish
of Stepney. The coast-line here is thick-set with little
towns of business and pleasure, grimy coal ports and
odorous fishing havens, alternating with bathing beaches
77
Bonnie Scotland
and golf-links in the openings of the low cliffs. At the
western edge has now been taken in the old burgh Culross,
pronounced in a manner that may strike strangers as
curious. Not far from the Forth Bridge is the prettiest of
Edinburgh seaside resorts, Aberdour, with its own ruins to
show, and the remains of an abbey on Inchcolm that shuts
in its bay, and behind it Lord Moray's mansion of Doni-
bristle, part of which stands a charred shell, burned down
and rebuilt three times till its owner accepted what seemed
a decree of fate. Opposite Edinburgh, Burntisland's prosaic
features make a setting for the castle of Rossend, with
its romantic scandal about Queen Mary and Chastelard.
Beyond Kirkcaldy come Leven and Largo, trying to grow
together about the statue of Alexander Selkirk ; and Largo
House was home of a more ancient Fifeshire mariner,
Andrew Wood, his " Yellow Frigate " a sore thorn in
England's side, as commemorated by a novel of James
Grant, who wrote so many once-so-popular romances of
war. Fife coast towns have a way of sorting themselves
in couples. At the corner of the bay overlooked by
Largo Law, Elie and Earlsferry flourish together as a
family bathing place, behind which, at the pronunciation of
Kilconquhar the uninitiated may take a thousand guesses
in vain. Then we have Anstruther and Crail on Fifeness,
that sharp point of the East Neuk of Fife. Round this,
at the mouth of the Eden, we come to St. Andrews,
" gem of the province."
Everybody has heard of St. Andrews, but only those
who have seen it understand its peculiar rank among sea-
side resorts. It is distinguished by a certain quiet air,
like some high-born spinster's, accustomed to command
The Kingdom of Fife
respect, whose heirlooms of lace and jewellery put her
above any need of following the fashions. Her parvenu
rivals must lay themselves out to attract, must make the
best of their advantages, must ogle and flirt, and strain
themselves to profit by the vogue of public favour. St.
Andrews does not display so much as an esplanade,
standing secure upon her sober dignity, a little dashed,
indeed, of Saturday afternoons by excursions from Dundee.
Other sea-side places may be said to flourish, but the
word seems inappropriate in the case of this resort, that
yet thrives sedately, as how should she not with so many
strings to her bow ? First of all she is a venerable
University city, whose Mrs. Bouncers ought to make a
good thing of it with the students and the sea-bathing
visitors playing "Box and Cox" for them through the
winter session and the summer season. Then she is a
Scottish Clifton or Brighton of schools, recommended by
the singular healthiness of the place. Unless in the smart
new quarter near the railway station, the dignified bearing
of an ancient town carries it over the flighty manners of
a watering-place. The only pier is a thing of use, where
the wholesome smell of seaweed mingles with a strong
fishy flavour. No gilded pagoda of a bandstand profanes
the " Scores," that cliff road which your Margates would
have made into a formal promenade. A few bathing
machines on the sands alone hint at one side of the town's
character. In one of the rocky coves of the cliff is a
Ladies' bathing place, which I can praise only by report.
But the Step Rock, with its recent enclosure to catch the
tide, is now more than ever the best swimming place on
the East Coast.
79
Bonnie Scotland
What first strikes one in St. Andrews is its union of
regularity and picturesqueness, and of a cheerful well-to-
do present with relics of a romantic past. Its airy
thoroughfares, with their plain solidity of modern Scottish
architecture, form an effective setting for bits of antiquity,
such as the ivy-clad fragment of Blackfriars' Chapel, and
the Abbey wall, beneath which no professor cares to
walk, lest then should be fulfilled a prophecy that it
is one day to fall upon the wisest head in St. Andrews.
The architectural treasures of this historic cathedral city
would alone be enough to make it a place of pilgrimage.
"You have here," says Carlyle, "the essence of all the
antiquity of Scotland in good and clean condition."
Southron strangers will hardly understand how these
fragments of ecclesiasticism have become a nursery of
Protestant sentiment. A generation ago it was stated
that but one solitary Romanist could be found in the
little city. Generations of Scottish children, like myself,
have been shown that gloomy dungeon at the bottom of
which once pined the victims of Giant Pope, a sight to
fill us with shuddering horror and hate of persecuting
times ; but we were not told how Protestants could
persecute, too, while they knew not yet of what spirit
they were. What shades of grim romance haunt these
crumbling walls, what memories of Knox and Beaton,
what dreams of the old Stuart days ! I never realised
the power of their associations till one evening, on the
Scores, there sat down beside me two French tourists
who had somehow strayed into St. Andrews, and their
light talk of boulevards, theatres, and such like, seemed
sacrilegious under the shadow of the Martyrs' Memorial.
80
IN GLENFINLAS, PERTHSHIRE
The Kingdom of Fife
I have an acquaintance with St. Andrews going back
more than half a century. My introduction to club life
was at the club here, then a cottage of two or three
rooms, into which I was invited under charge of my
nurse, and treated to the refreshment of gingerbread
snaps by a member who seemed to me little short of
a patriarch. In the scenery of my childhood, nothing
stands out more clearly and cheerfully than those sandy
green links dotted with red jackets and red flags, not
to speak of the red balls with which enthusiasts bid
defiance to snow and ice. Nay, another among my
earliest reminiscences is of seeing the multitudinous seas
themselves incarnadined, when, for once, the golfers
allowed their attention to be drawn from their own
hazards. A cry had been raised that a lady was drown-
ing ; then every group of red jackets within hearing
forgot their balls, flung down their clubs, raced across
the links, dashed into the waves, and struggled emulously
to the rescue. I think a caddie, after all, was the fortunate
youth who had the glory of achieving such an adventure.
Since those days, when feather balls cost half-a-crown
and few profane foreigners had penetrated its mysteries,
the Golf Club has been transformed in a style becoming
the chief temple of this Benares, hard by a more modest
"howff" for the "professionals" who are its Brahmins,
where little " caddies " swarm like the monkeys of an
Indian sanctuary. For golf is the idol of a cult that
draws here many pilgrims from far lands, now that, in
the international commerce of amusement, while bare-
legged little Macs take kindly to cricket, the time-honoured
Caledonian game spreads fast and far over England, over
81 ii
Bonnie Scotland
the world, indeed, for on dusty Indian maidans good
Scotsmen can be seen trying to play the rounds of Zion
in that strange land, and under the very Pyramids a golf
course is laid out, where the dust of Pharaohs may serve
as a tee, or a mummy pit prove the most provoking of
bunkers. In the home of its birth this pastime flourishes
more than ever. Parties are given for golf along with
tea and tennis ; schools begin to lay out their golf ground
as well as their football field ; and at St. Andrews we
have the Ladies' Links, where many a masculine heart has
been gently spooned or putted into the hole of matrimony.
Fair damsels may even be seen lifting and driving in a
" foursome," an innovation frowned at by some old
stagers, who hardly care to talk about the game till it is
ended, and then can talk of nothing else. " Tee, veniente
die, fee, decedente — !" is the song of St. Andrews,
which asks for no more absorbing joy than a round
in the morning and a round in the evening. In the
eyes of inveterate golfers, all prospects are poor beside
those links that make the Mecca, the Monte Carlo, the
Epsom of the royal game, so one is free to give up
the surrounding country as not much contributing to the
attractions of the place, many of whose visitors hardly care
to stir beyond their beloved arena, unless for a Sunday
afternoon walk along the shore as far as that curious
freak of the elements known as the Spindle Rock.
Besides its devotion to the game where clubs are
always trumps, St. Andrews has in the last generation had
an attraction for celebrities in literature and science. The
University staff, of course, makes a permanent depot of
intellect. The facile essayist A.K.H.B. was long parish
The Kingdom of Fife
minister here, when the Episcopal bishop was a nephew
of Wordsworth, himself an author too well known to
schoolboys. Here Robert Chambers spent the evening
of his days, Blackwood the publisher had a house close
at hand, where many famous authors have been guests.
In the vicinity, too, is Mount Melville, seat of Whyte-
Melville, the novelist. Not to mention living names,
the late Mrs. Lynn Linton was a warm lover of St.
Andrews. It must have been well known to Mrs.
Oliphant, more than one of whose novels take this
country for their scene.
Is it impertinent to say a word in praise of a writer,
too soon forgotten at circulating libraries, where she was
but too voluminously in evidence for the best part of her
lifetime ? Had she been content with a flat in Grub
Street, Mrs. Oliphant might now be better remembered
than by the mass of often hasty work for which her way
of life gave hostages to fortune and to publishers. Her
novels often smell too much of an Aladdin's lamp that
had to be rubbed hard for copy ; there is awful example
to money- making authorship in a middle period of
them that scared off readers for whom again she would
rise to her early charm. Defects she had, notably a
curious warp of sympathy that led her to do less than
poetic justice to prodigal ne'er-do-weels ; but her chief
fault was in writing too much, when at her best she was
very good. Her best known stories are those which
deal with English life ; yet she was not less happy in
describing her native Scotland, having an extraordinary
insight that set her at home in very varied scenes and
classes of society. Few writers are found in touch with
83
Bonnie Scotland
so many phases of life. Even George Eliot, sure as she
is in portraying her Midland middle-class life, seems a
little depayse when she strays among fine folk ; and many
a skilful novelist might be mentioned who falls into con-
vention or caricature as soon as he gets out of his own
familiar environment. But, after Sir Walter, I doubt
if there be any author who has given us such a varied
gallery of Scottish characters, high and low, divined
with Scott's sympathy and often drawn with Jane
Austen's minute skill. Her servants and farmers seem
as natural as her baronets and ministers, all of them
indeed ordinary human beings, not the freaks and
monsters of the overcharged art that for the moment
has thrown such work as hers into the shade.
Of her tales dealing with Fife, perhaps the best, at
least the longest, is "The Primrose Path," a beautiful
idyll of this East Neuk, its scene laid within a few miles
of St. Andrews, evidently at Leuchars, where such a
noble Norman chancel is disgraced by the modern
meeting-house built on to it, and the old shell of Earl's
Hall offered itself as a fit setting for the drama of an
innocent girl's heart, that at the end shifts its stage to
England. The hero, he that is to be made happy after
all, plays a somewhat colourless part in the background ;
but heroes have license to be lay figures. The real
protagonist, the imperfectly villainous Rob Glen, seems
to walk out of the canvas ; and all the other characters,
from the high-bred, scholarly father to the love-sick
servant lass, are alive with humour and kindliness. As for
the scenery, it is thus that Mrs. Oliphant puts the East
Neuk in its best point of view : —
ON THE DOCHART, KILLIN, PERTHSHIRE
The Kingdom of Fife
" There does not seem much beauty to spare in the east of
Fife. Low hills, great breadths of level fields : the sea a great
expanse of blue or leaden grey, fringed with low reefs of dark
rocks like the teeth of some hungry monster, dangerous and grim
without being picturesque, without a ship to break its monotony.
But yet with those limitless breadths of sky and cloud, the wistful
clearness and golden after-glow, and all the varying blueness of
the hills, it would have been difficult to surpass the effect of the
great amphitheatre of sea and land of which this solitary grey old
house formed the centre. The hill, behind which the sun had
set, is scarcely considerable enough to have a name j but it threw
up its outline against the wonderful greenness, blueness, goldenness
of the sky with a grandeur which would not have misbecome an
Alp. Underneath its shelter, grey and sweet, lay the soft levels
of Stratheden in all their varying hues of colour, green corn, and
brown earth, and red fields of clover, and dark belts of wood.
Behind were the two paps of the Lomonds, rising green against
the clear serene : and on the other side entwining lines of hills,
with gleams of golden light breaking through the mists, clearing
here and there as far as the mysterious Grampians, far off under
Highland skies. This was one side of the circle ; and the other
was the sea, a sea still blue under the faint evening skies, in which
the young moon was rising ; the yellow sands of Forfarshire on
one hand, stretching downwards from the mouth of the Tay, the
low brown cliffs and green headlands bending away on the other
towards Fifeness — and the great bow of water reaching to the
horizon between. Nearer the eye, showing half against the
slope of the coast, and half against the water, rose St. Andrews
on its cliff, the fine dark tower of the college church poised over
the little city, the jagged ruins of the castle marking the out-
line, the cathedral rising majestically in naked pathos ; and old
St. Rule, homely and weather-beaten, oldest venerable pilgrim
of all, standing strong and steady, at watch upon the younger
turies."
From the flattest part of Fife, let us turn to its
85
Bonnie Scotland
inland Highland side. The main North British line to
Perth, after passing a dreary coal-field, brings us suddenly
beneath the bold swell of Benarty, round which we come
in view of the Lomonds with Loch Leven sparkling at
their foot. Here indeed we soon get into the small shire
of Kinross ; but this may be taken as a dependency of
the kingdom of Fife, its lowlands also running on the
west side into a miniature Highland region, reached by
the railway branch that from Loch Leven goes off to
Stirling by the Devon Valley and the Ochils, at the end
of which Clackmannan vies with Kinross as the Rutland
of Scottish counties.
Loch Leven is celebrated for its breed of trout, and for
that grey tower half hidden by trees on an islet, which
was poor Mary Stuart's prison. The dourest Scotsman's
heart has three soft spots, the memory of Robert Burns,
the romance of Prince Charlie, and the misfortunes that
seem to wash out the errors of that girl queen. This is
dubious ground, into which tons of paper and barrels of
ink have been thrown without filling up a quaking bog of
controversy. I myself have heard a distinguished scholar
hissed off the most philosophic platform in Scotland for
throwing a doubt on Queen Mary's innocence, so I will
say no more than that her harshest historian, if shut up
with her in Loch Leven as page or squire, might have been
tempted to steal the keys and take an oar in the boat that
bore her over those dark waters to brief freedom and
safety. Had Charles Edward only had the luck to get his
head cut off in solemn state, how much more gloriously
dear might now be his memory !
As Scott points out, Fife was noted for a thick crop of
86
The Kingdom of Fife
gentry, who were apt to be found on the side of the Queen
Marys and Prince Charlies, whereas its sturdy common folk
rather favoured Whig principles. Not far from Kinross,
the grey homespun of Scottish life is proclaimed by one of
those ugly obelisks that have so much commended them-
selves for the expression of Protestant sentiment. At Gairney
Bridge, on the Fife and Kinross border, in 1733, four sus-
pended ministers formed themselves into the first Presbytery
of the Original Secession Church, a most fissiparous body
which brought forth a brood of sects not yet altogether
swallowed up in the recent union of the Free and United
Presbyterian churches. I am bound to special interest in that
foundation, for as a forebear of mine appears riding away
from the shores of Loch Leven in Queen Mary's train, so
one of those four seceders was my great-great-great-great
(or thereabouts) grandfather, Moncrieffof Culfargie, himself
grandson of a still remembered Covenanter. His spiritual
descendants make a point of the fact that being a small
laird, he yet ^estified against the unpopular system of
patronage, and thus is taken to have been before his time.
But Plato amicuS) etc., or as Sterne translates, " Dinah is
my aunt, but truth is my sister," and a closer examination
reveals among the heads of my forefather's testimony
against the Church of Scotland a conscientious protest
in favour of executing witches and persecuting Roman
Catholics, so perhaps the less said about his views the
better. A few years before, a poor old wife, rubbing her
hands in crazy delight at the blaze, had been burned as a
witch for the last time in Scotland ; and the " moderate "
ministers were now content to ignore an imaginary crime
which a few years later became wiped out of the statute-book.
8?
Bonnie Scotland
The ancestral shade should know how filial piety
urged me, perhaps alone in this generation, to perform the
rite of reading his works, which indeed want such " go "
and "snap " as are admired by congregations who "have
lost the art of listening to two hours' sermons. " He was
truly a painful and earnest preacher, in one volume of
whose discourses I note this mark of wide-mindedness, that
it is entitled "England's Alarm/' whereas other old Scottish
divines seem rather to treat the neighbour country as
beyond hope of alarming. His brother-in-law, Clerk of
Penicuik, characterises Culfargie as " a very sober, good
man, except he should carry his very religious whims so far
as to be very uneasy to everybody about him." It is recorded
of him that he prayed from his pulpit for the Hanoverian
King in face of the Pretender's bristling soldiery, like that
other stout Whig divine whose petition ran, " As for this
young man who has come among us seeking an earthly crown,
may it please Thee to bestow upon him a heavenly one ! "
Loyalty to the same line was less frankly shown by a
very different member of our clan, Margaret Moncrieff,
a name little renowned on this side the Atlantic, while
she figures in more than one American book as the
"Beautiful Spy." Being shut up among rebels in New
York, when the besieging Engineers were commanded
by her father Colonel Moncrieff, she got leave to send
him little presents, among them flower-paintings on velvet,
beneath which were traced plans of the American works.
The device being discovered, it might have gone hard
with her but for Yankee chivalry, that expelled that artful
hussy unhurt, in the end to bring no honour upon her
name, if all tales of her be true.
The Kingdom of Fife
The ancestral worthy whose memory has led me into
a digression, lived and laboured in Strathearn, to which
from Kinross we pass by Glenfarg, no Highland glen but
a fine gulf of greenery with stream, road, and railway
winding side by side through its banks and knolls, that
called forth Queen Victoria's warm admiration on her first
visit to Scotland. At the other end of this Ochil gorge
we are welcomed to Perthshire by the wooded crags of
Moncrieff Hill, round which the Earn bends to the Tay ;
then some dozen miles behind, rises the edge of the true
Highlands, where " to the north-west a sea of mountains
rolls away to Cape Wrath in wave after wave of gneiss,
schist, quartzite, granite, and other crystalline masses."
12
CHAPTER V
THE FAIR CITY
PERTH, the central city of Scotland, whose name has been
so flourishingly transplanted to the antipodes, is a very
ancient place. Not to insist on fond derivation from a
Roman Bertha, there seems to have been a Roman station
on the Tay, probably at the confluence of the Almond ;
and curious antiquarians have found cause for confessing
to Pontius Pilate as perhaps born in the county, a reproach
softened by the consideration of his father being little
better than a Roman exciseman. The alias of St. John-
ston Perth got from its patron saint, who came to be so
scurvily handled at the Reformation. At this date it was
the only walled city of Scotland. Before this, it had been
intermittently the Stuart capital in such a sense as the
residence of its Negus is for Abyssinia ; and farther back
Tayside was the seat of the Alpine kingdom that succeeded
a Pictish power. Now sunk in relative importance, Perth
makes the central knot of Scottish railway travelling ; so
on the Eve of St. Grouse its palatial station becomes one
of the busiest spots in the kingdom, though the main
platform is a third of a mile long. To the stay-at-home
public it may perhaps be best known by an industry that
90
PERTH FROM THE SLOPES OF KINNOUL HILL
The Fair City
has given rise to the proverb "See Perth and dye" one
which might have darker significance in days when this
low site depended for drainage on the floods of the Tay
flushing its cellars and cesspools. But its own citizens
are brought up to believe that no Naples of them all has
so much right to the title of the " Fair City."
Legend tells how Roman soldiers gaining a prospect of
the Tay from the heights south of Perth, exclaimed on its
North Inch as another Campus Martius ; but later visitors
have not always shared the local admiration. One modern
Italian traveller, Signor Piovanelli, after wandering two or
three hours about the Perth streets, took away an im-
pression of dull melancholy ; but then he began with an
unsatisfactory experience at the Refreshment Room. An
else conscientious French tourist explains the bustle of
Perth station as its being the rendezvous of the inhabit-
ants seeking distraction from their triste life. These be
ignorant calumnies. At least our northern York is a
typical Scottish town, well displaying the strata of its
development. In quite recent years it has been much
transmogrified by a new thoroughfare, fittingly named
Scott Street, which, running from near the station right
through the city, has altered its centre of gravity. The old
High Street and South Street, with their " vennels " and
" closes," lead transversely from Scott Street to the river,
cut at the other end by George Street and John Street,
which had supplanted them as main lines of business.
"Where are the shops ? " I was once asked by a bewildered
party of country excursionists, wandering unedified about
the vicinity of the station. In those days one had to send
them across the city to the streets parallel with the river ;
9'
Bonnie Scotland
but now Scott Street has attracted the Post Office, the
Theatre and the Free Library, and bids fair to become the
Strand or the Regent Street of the Fair City, fringed by
such a display of latter-day villas as attests the prosperity
of its business quarters.
Fragments of mediaeval antiquity also must be sought
for towards the river. Off John Street stands the old
Cathedral, in the practical Scottish manner shared into
three places of worship, once containing dozens of altars,
among which an impudent schoolboy threw the first
image-breaking stone that spread such a ripple of icono-
clasm through the shrines of Scotland. Close by, on the
river bank, the Gaol occupies the site of Gowrie House,
where James VI. had his mysterious or mythical escape
from treason. The Parliament House, too, has vanished,
its memory preserved by the name of a " close," the Scottish
equivalent for alley. The citizens have lately adopted a
traditional " Fair Maid's " house as their official lion, to
which indicators point the way from all over the city.
This, whatever the higher criticism may say of its claims,
has been well restored as a specimen of a solid burgher's
home in those days when Simon the Glover was so vexed
by the vagaries of his Highland apprentice and by the
roistering suitors of his daughter. Since then, Perth has
not wanted Fair Maids ; but in our time the title has
sometimes had a satiric tang as implying what the French
stigmatise as une rosse.
Simon, as we know, lived close to the royal lodging,
which, after the destruction of the castle, was wont to be
thriftily taken in the great monastery of Blackfriars, now
represented only by the names of a house and a street.
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The Fair City
Iii it were enacted stirring scenes of history as well as of
nction, its darkest tragedy the murder of James I. on a
February night of 1437. Handsome, brave, a scholar and
poet, with the advantage of an involuntary English educa-
tion, in quieter times this king might have shown himself
the best of the Stuarts. He had the welfare of the people
at heart, and on his return from the captivity in which he
spent his boyhood, tried to bring some degree of order
among the lawless feuds of his barons, using against them
indeed high-handed and crooked means that were the
statecraft of the age. Thus he roused fell enemies who
were able to take him unawares, though the story goes
that, like Alexander and Caesar, he had warning from
an uncredited seer. Betrayed by false courtiers, he was
retiring to bed when the monastery rang with the tramp
and cries of the fierce Highlandmen seeking his blood.
While the queen and her ladies tried to defend the door,
Catherine Douglas giving her broken arm, says the legend,
as a bar, James tore up the flooring and let himself down
into a drain which he had, unluckily, blocked up a few
days before, since in it his tennis balls got lost. There he
was discovered by the conspirators, and after a desperate
struggle their leader, Sir Thomas Graham, stabbed him
to death. Not a minute too soon, for already the good
burghers were roused to the rescue, and the regicides had
some ado to spur off to the Highlands, safe only for a
time, the principal criminals being taken for tortures that
horrified even their cruel contemporaries.
From the windings of the Blackfriars quarter, one
emerges by what was the North Port, upon Perth's
famous Inch, bordered by erections that a generation ago
93
Bonnie Scotland
were the modest West End of the city — Athole Place, the
Crescent, Rose Terrace, and Barossa Place. At the foot
of the Inch, by the river, stands a tall obelisk in honour
of the 9bth Regiment, the " Perthshire Volunteers," now
amalgamated with the Cameronians ; and near it the
customary statue of Prince Albert, one of the first
inaugurated by Queen Victoria, who then insisted on
knighting the Lord Provost of the city, a worthy grocer,
much to his discontent, and, if all tales be true, to his loss
in business. Perth, as becomes the ex-capital, has a Lord
Provost, who cannot meet the Lord Provost of Glasgow
without raising sore points of precedence. Invested with
special powers when Perth was a royal residence, its
magistrates were not persons to be trifled with, as an
English officer found early in the eighteenth century.
This mettlesome spark, quartered here, had fatally stabbed
a dancing-master who stood in the way of troublesome
attentions to one of his pupils. The same day, tradition
has it, the slaughterer was seized, tried, and hanged under
the old law of " red-hand," then put in force for the last
time. An ornament to the story is that the criminal's
brother commanded a ship of war in the Firth of Forth,
over which was the way to Edinburgh, and that he long
kept watch for a chance of capturing some Perth bailie on
whom to take revenge. These were the good old times.
By the bridge at the foot of the North Inch, a pre-
tentious classical structure, marking the era of Provost
Marshall whom it commemorates, rears its dome above
a Museum of Antiquities such as becomes an ancient
city. This faces the end of Tay Street, the pleasant river-
side boulevard between the North and South Inches,
94
BEN A AN, CORNER OF LOCH KATRINE,
PERTHSHIRE
The Fair City
towards the farther end of which a newer Museum contains
a remarkable natural history collection. At its corner
of South Street are the County Buildings, adorned with
portraits of local worthies, and at the end of High Street,
the City Buildings with windows illustrating Perth's
history. Perth has now two bridges and everything hand-
some about it — besides the Dundee railway bridge with
its footway from the South Inch. The central bridge
is only three or four years old, but here stood one
washed away in 1621, since when the citizens had long
to depend on what is now the old bridge below the
North Inch.
This bridge leads over into the transpontine suburb,
above which, on the slopes of Kinnoul Hill, the rank
and fashion of the city have inclined to seek " eligible
building sites," Scottid, "feuing plots." The banks of
the river, too, on this side have long been bordered by
villas and cottages of gentility ; but about " Bridge End "
there is still a fragment of the humbler suburb that has had
more than one famous sojourner in our time. Here, in
a house now distinguished by a tablet, and afterwards in
Rose Terrace opposite, John Ruskin spent bits of his child-
hood with an aunt, wife of the tanner whose unsavoury
business had the credit of keeping the cholera away from
Bridge End. That amateur of beauty, for his part, has
nothing but good to say of Perth : he remembers with
pleasure the precipices of Kinnoul, the swirling pools
of the "Goddess-river," even the humble "Lead," in
which other less gifted children have found "a treasure
of flowing diamond," now covered up to belie his vision
of its defilement ; and his lifelong impression was that
95
Bonnie Scotland
"Scottish sheaves are more golden than are bound in
other lands, and that no harvests elsewhere visible to
human eyes are so like the ' corn of heaven ' as those of
Strath Tay and Strath -Earn.'* Yet youthful gladness
turned to pain, when through his connection with Perth
Ruskin came to make that ill-matched marriage with its
fairest maid, afterwards known as Lady Millais. Their
brief union he passes over in silence in his else most com-
municative reminiscences ; and the writer were indiscreet
indeed who should revive rumours spun round a case of
hopeless incompatibility. One misty legend, probably
untrue, declares him, for certain reasons, to have vowed
never to enter the house in which her family lived, that
Bowerswell mansion, a little up the hill, where a crystal
spring had often arrested his childish attention. He did
enter the house once, to be married, according to the
custom of the bride's Presbyterian Church : hinc illae
lacrimae, according to the legend.
Like that great prose-poet, the reader's humble servant,
without being able to boast himself a native of Perth,
spent part of his youth here and has pleasant memories that
tempt him, too, to be garrulous. I have no recollection of
seeing Ruskin at Perth, but I well remember Millais in
the prime of manly beauty. In the early days of his fame
he lived much with his wife's family at Bowerswell ; and
several of the children he then painted so charmingly were
playmates of mine, who would come to our Christmas
parties in the picturesque costumes he had been putting
on canvas. For some reason or other, he never proposed
to immortalise my features ; but I have boyish memories
of him that seem to hint at the two sides of his art. My
96
The Fair City
sister sat for one of his most famous pictures, on which,
in the capacity of escort to his child model, I had the
unappreciated privilege of seeing him at work. What
struck a little Philistine like me was how the painter paid
no attention to a call to lunch, working away in such a
furor of industry as I could sympathise with only if
mischief were in question. Someone brought him a plate
of soup and a glass of wine, which he hastily swallowed
on his knees, and again flung himself into his absorbing
task. My internal reflection was that in thus despising
his meals this man showed such sense as Macfarlane's
geese who, as Scott records, loved their play better than
their meat. But a quite different behaviour on another
occasion excited stronger disapproval of the future P.R.A.
in my schoolboy mind. When out shooting with my
father one hot day, I took him to a little moorland farm
where the people would offer us a glass of milk. Millais
rather scornfully asked if they had no cream. They
brought him a tumblerful, the whole yield for the day
probably, and he tossed if off with a " Das ist kleine
Gabe ! " air that set me criticising the artistic tempera-
ment. It was a fixed notion with young Scots that all
English people were greedy : "Set roasted beef and
pudding on the opposite side o' the pit o' Tophet, and
an Englishman will make a spang at it ! " exclaimed the
goodwife of Aberfoyle. Thus we give back the southron's
sneer for our frugal poverty. Our old Adam might
welcome the good things of life that fairly came our way ;
but we schooled each other in a Spartan point of honour
that forbade too frank enjoyment. Millais was born very
far south ; and there are those who say that he might
97 13
Bonnie Scotland
have been a still greater painter, had he shown less taste
for the cream of life.
From Bowerswell, an artist had not far to go for scenes
of beauty. The road past the house, winding up to a
Roman Catholic monastery built since those days, leads on
into the woods of Kinnoul Hill, which is to Perth what
Arthur's Seat is to Edinburgh. No tourist should, as
many do, neglect to take the shady climb through those
woods, suggesting the scenes of a tamed German "Wald."
At the farther side one comes out on the edge of a grand
crag, the view from which has been compared to the Rhine
valley, and to carry out this similitude, a mock ruin
crowns the adjacent cliff. We have here turned our
backs on the Grampians so finely seen from the Perth
slope of the hill, and are looking down upon the Tay as
it bends eastward between this spur of the Sidlaws and the
wooded outposts of the Ochils opposite, then, swollen by
the Earn, opens out into its Firth in the Carse of Gowrie,
dotted with snug villages and noble seats such as the
Castle of Kinfauns among the woods at our feet, a scene
most lovely when
The sun was setting on the Tay,
The blue hills melting into grey ;
The mavis and the blackbird's lay
Were sweetly heard in Gowrie.
The Gowrie earldom, once so powerful in Perth, has
disappeared from its life ; but the title is still familiar as
covering one of those districts of a Scottish county that
bear enduring by - names, like the Devonshire South
Hams or the Welsh Vale of Glamorgan. To a native
ear, the scene is half suggested by the word Carse,
LOCH VENNACHAR, PERTHSHIRE
The Fair City
implying a stretch of rich lowland along a riverside,
whereas Strath is the more broken and extensive valley
of a river that has its upper course in some wilder Glen
or tiny Den, the Dean of so many southern villages.
The course of the Tay from Perth to Dundee, below
Kinnoul, ceases to be romantic while remaining beautiful
in a more sedate and stately fashion as it flows between
its receding walls of wooded heights, underneath which
the " Carles of the Carse " had once such an ill name as
Goldsmith's rude Carinthian boor, but so many a " Lass
of Gowrie " has shown a softer heart — , ;
She whiles did smile and whiles did greet ;
The blush and tear were on her cheek.
There are various versions of this ballad, whose tune
makes the Perth local anthem ; but they all tell the same
old tale and often told, with that most hackneyed of
ends —
The old folks syne gave their consent ;
And then unto Mass-John we went ;
Who tied us to our hearts' content,
Me and the Lass o' Gowrie.
Many a stranger comes and goes at Perth without
guessing what charming prospects may be sought out on
its environing heights. But half an hour's stroll through
the streets must make him aware of those Inches that
prompt a hoary jest concerning the size of the Fair City.
The North and South Inches, between which it lies,
properly islands, green flats beside the Tay, are in their
humble way its Hyde Park and Regent's Park. The
South Inch, close below the station, is the less extensive,
99
Bonnie Scotland
once the grounds of a great Carthusian monastery, then
site of a strong fort built by Cromwell, now notable
mainly for the avenue through which the road from
Edinburgh comes in over it, and for the wharf at its side
that forms a port for small vessels and excursion steamers
plying by leave of the tide. On the landward side,
beyond the station, Perth is spreading itself up the
broomy slopes of Craigie Hill, which still offers pleasant
rambles. Beyond the farther end stands a gloomy
building once well known to evil-doers as the General
Prison for Scotland ; but of late years its character has
undergone some change ; and I am not sure how far the
old story may still keep its point that represents an
i'hmate set loose from these walls, when hailed by a friendly
wayfarer as " honest man," giving back glumly " None
of your dry remarks ! "
A more cheerful sight is the golf links on Moncrieff
Island, above which crosses the railway to Dundee. This
neighbour has long surpassed Perth, grown on jute and
linen to be the third city of Scotland, its name perhaps
most familiar through the marmalade which used to be
manufactured, I understand, in the Channel Islands, when
wicked wit declared its maker to have a contract for
sweeping out the Dundee theatre. Northern under-
graduates at Oxford and Cambridge are believed to have
spread to southern breakfasts the use of this confection in
the form so well known now that its materials are so
cheap. The name has a Greek ancestry, and the thing
seems to have come to us as quince-preserve, through the
Portuguese marmeloy in time transferred and restricted to
another fruit. Oranges, indeed, could not have been as
100
The Fair City
plentiful as blackberries in Britain, when the Euphuist
Lyly compared life without love to a meal without
marmalade.
Such a twenty-miles digression from the South Inch
implies how little there is to say about it. Now let us
take a dander up the larger North Inch, Perth's Campus
Martius, at once promenade, race-course, review ground,
grazing common, washing green, golf links, cricket-field,
and area for unfenced football games in which, summer
and winter, young Scots learn betimes to earn gate-money
for English clubs. Opposite the Perth Academy appears
to have been the arena where that early professional, Hal
o' the Wynd, played up so well in the deadly match by
which the Clan Kay and the Clan Chattan enacted the
less authentic tragedy of the Kilkenny cats. This spacious
playground is now edged by a neat walk, which makes the
constitutional round of sedate citizens, who on the safe
riverside have the spectacle of pleasure boating against the
difficulties of a strong stream and shallow rapids, and of
the pulling of salmon nets in the season. Here a bare-
legged laddie, with the rudest tackle, has been known to
hook a 3O-lb. fish, holding on to the monster for two
hours till some men helped him out with his fortune.
The salmon of the Tay, reared in the Stormontfield Ponds
above Perth, are famous for size, a weight of over 70 Ibs.
being not unknown ; and cavillers on other streams can-
not belittle its bigger fish by the sneer of " bigger liars
there ! " The keeping of fish in ice, and railway com-
munications, have much enhanced the price, to the
astonishment of a Highland laird who in a London tavern
ordered a steak for himself and a " salmon for Donald "
101
Bonnie Scotland
without guessing that his henchman's meal must be paid
for in gold as his own in silver. The old story of
masters contracting not to feed their servants on salmon
more than twice a week, is told, by Ruskin for one, of Tay-
side as of other river-lands. But so masterful are the
demands of London now, that salmon may sometimes be
dearer on the banks of the Tay than in the glutted
metropolitan market. The Tay has another treasure,
for now and then valuable pearls have been fished out of
it by boys who, in a dry summer, can wade across its
shallows just above the old bridge. A very different sight
might be seen here when the river was frozen across and
roughened by a jam of miniature icebergs.
Half-way up the town side of the Inch, where a few
trees dotted across it mark its old limits, extended more
than a century ago, stands the now restored mansion of
Balhousie, which used to be known as Bushy by that
curious trick of contraction, more common in Scottish than
in English names, that drove a bewildered foreigner to
complain of our pronouncing as Marchbanks what we spelt
as Cholmondeley. But one notes how in Scotland as in
England, the tendency is to restore such words to their
full sound, as in this case. Near the station in Perth is
Pomarium Street, marking the orchard of the old Carthusian
monastery, or, as some have held, the outskirt of the
Roman City. Consule Planco, I knew it only as the Pow ;
but out of curiosity I lately tried this abbreviation in vain
on a postman and on a telegraph boy of the present genera-
tion. Methven, near Perth, was always pronounced Meffen\
Henry VIII. spells it Muffyn ; as Ruthven was and perhaps
still is Riven. The station of Milngavie is no longer
102
A CROFT NEAR DALMALLY, 'ARGYLLSHIRE
The Fair City
proclaimed by railway porters as Millguy, and the place
Claverhouse — no hero indeed at spelling — spells Ruglen,
tends to assume its full dignity of Rutherglen, as Ciren-
cester or Abergavenny lose their old contractions in this
generation's mouth. Many other examples might be
given of a change, with which, I fancy, railway porters
have much to do ; but one of the best authorities on such
matters. Dr. H. Bradley, puts it down to what he calls
half-education, setting up spelling as an idol. As for the
altered pronunciation of Scottish family names, that seems
often to come from English blundering, modestly adopted
by their owners. Balfour, to take a distinguished example,
was Balfour, till the trick of southern speech shifted back
the accent. Forbes is still vernacularly a dissyllable in
the Forbes country, as in Marmion^ and in the old school-
boy saw about General 4 B's, who marched his 4 C's, etc.
Dalziels and Menzies must have long given up in despair
the attempt to get their names properly pronounced in the
south as Deel and Meengus. The family known at home
as Jimmy son become now content to have made a noise
in the world as Jameson. But some such changes have
been long in progress. It was " bloody Mackenzie " whom
audacious boys dared to come out of his grave in Grey friars1
Churchyard ; and if we go far enough back we find the
name of this persecutor written Mackennich. In the good
old times every gentleman had his own spelling, as what
for no ? There is a deed, and not a very ancient one,
drawn up by certain forebears of mine, in which, among
them, they spell their name five different ways. In general,
it may be remembered, the z that makes such a stumbling-
block to strangers in so many Scottish names, is to be taken
103
Bonnie Scotland
as a y. When we have such real enigmas as Colquhoun
and Kirkcudbright to boggle over, the wonder is that
Milton should make any ado at Gordon or " Galasp," by
which he probably meant Gillespie.
Nearly opposite Balhousie, which has suggested this
digression, across the Tay, peeps out the house of Spring-
lands, which reminds me how Perth has been the cradle of a
sect. The Sandemans of Springlands in my youth exhibited
some marked religious leanings, but none of them, I think,
followed the doctrine of their ancestor. The sect in ques-
tion was founded in the days of early methodism by John
Glass, a Scottish clergyman ; but his son-in-law, Robert
Sandeman, proved so much the Paul of the new faith by
preaching it as far as America, that there, as in England,
the body is known as Sandemanians, while in Scotland
they still sometimes bear the original name Glassites.
Their most famous member was Michael Faraday, who
preached in the London meeting-house. Its doctrine
had, like Plymouth Brethrenism, a strange attraction for
old Indian officers, who, cut off from home influences,
repelled by surrounding heathenism, and their brains
perhaps a little addled by the sun, have often been led to
read odd meanings into revelations and prophecies, studied
late in life. There used to be a detachment of retired
veterans encamped about Perth as headquarters of their
Bethel, whose wives and children, in some cases, attended
the Episcopal Chapel. A peculiarity of their belief was
an absolute horror of being present at any alien worship,
even family prayers, as I could show from some striking
instances. This must have borne hard on soldier converts,
who, in the army, are allowed a choice of only three forms
104
The Fair City
of worship. " No fancy religions in the service," growled
the sergeant to a recruit who professed himself a Seventh
Day Baptist : " fall in with the Roman Catholics ! "
Another note of the Sandemanians was an unwillingness
to communicate their views, what even seemed a resentful-
ness of inquiry by outsiders. Disraeli excused a similar
trait in the Jews by the dry remark, " The House of Lords
does not seek converts." I once in the innocent confid-
ence of youth asked a Glassite leader to enlighten me as
to their faith, and was snubbed with a short " The doors
are open." But I never heard of any stranger trusting
himself within the doors of that meeting-house. Report
gave out a love-feast as a main function, from which the
sect got " kailites " as a nickname. The kiss of peace, it
was understood, went round ; and ribald jesters represented
the presiding official as obliged to exhort, "Dinna pass
over the auld wife ! " This much one can truly say of
the congregation, that they were kind and helpful to each
other, a Glassite in distress being unknown in the Fair
City, where they had adherents in all classes. As for
their spiritual exclusiveness, against that reproach may be
set the old story of the " burgher " lass who, having once
attended an " anti-burgher " service with her lad, was
rebuked by her own kirk-session for the sin of "pro-
miscuous hearing."
Above the Inch comes the less trim space called the
" Whins," where lucky caddies glean lost golf balls in its
patches of scrub and in pools formed by the highest
flowing of the tide from the Firth. With this ends the
public pleasure-ground ; but the walk may be prolonged
along the elevated bank of the river, above the sward that
105 14
Bonnie Scotland
makes the town bathing-place, and brown pools that
Ruskin might have found perilous as well as picturesque,
but as he speaks of himself as keeping company with his
girl cousin, not to speak of the fear of his careful mother,
we may suppose that he made no rash excursions into the
water. One deep swirl within a miniature promontory is
aptly known as the " Pen and Ink " ; then higher up a
shallow creek encloses the " Woody Island," no island to
bare-legged laddies who here play Robinson Crusoe.
The opposite bank shows a lordly park with timber
that should bring a blush to the cheek of Dr. Johnson's
ghost, concealing the castellated Scone Palace, seat of its
Hereditary Keeper, Lord Mansfield, who has another
enviable home beside Hampstead Heath. Little remains
of the old royal Castle and Abbey of Scone ; the Stone
of Destiny, that ancient palladium, fabled pillow of Jacob's
vision of the angels, on which the Scottish kings were
crowned, has been in Westminster Abbey since Edward
I.'s invasion. The modern mansion contains some relics
of Queen Mary and her son, but its owners do not
encourage visitors. An eminence near at hand is known
by the curious name of the Boot Hill, tradition making it
formed by the earth which nobles after a coronation
emptied out of their boots, so stuffed that each proud
baron might feel the satisfaction of standing on his
own ground !
Half-a-dozen miles farther up the river, on this side,
one is free to seek the top of Dunsinnan Hill for what is
believed to have been the site of Macbeth's Castle, and for
a fine prospect of the Grampians with Birnam Wood in
the foreground. Shakespeare, and the legend he followed,
1 06
WET HARVEST TIME NEAR DALMALLY,
ARGYLLSHIRE
The Fair City
make no account of the fact that a considerable river
guarded Dunsinnan from hostile advance of its distant
neighbour. Yet a parish minister of these parts has con-
vinced himself that the author of Macbeth must have
known the neighbourhood. One conjecture is that he
visited Perth with a far-strolling troop of actors. " You
will say next that Shakespeare was Scotch ! " exclaimed a
scornful southron to a Scot who seemed too patriotic ;
and the cautious answer was, "Weel, his abeelity would
warrant the supposeetion." As for Macbeth and his good
lady, it is time that some serious attempt were made to
whitewash their characters, as Renan has done for Jezebel,
and Froude for Henry VIII. No doubt these two worthies
represented the good old Scottish party, strong on Dis-
ruption principles and sternly set against the Anglican in-
fluences introduced through Malcolm Canmore, in favour
of whose family the southern poet shows a natural bias.
Did we know the whole truth, that gracious Duncan may
have had a scheme to serve the Macbeths as the Macdonalds
of Glencoe were served by their guests. The one thing
clear in early Scottish history is that the dagger played
a greater part than the ballot box, and that scandals in
high life might sometimes be obscured by an eloquent
advocate on one side or other. Sir Walter does give
some hints for a brief in Macbeth's case, though in his
Tales of a Grandfather}^ sets the orthodox legend strutting
with its "cocked hat and stick." Macbeth, as he says,
probably met Duncan in fair fight near Elgin ; and the
scene of his own discomfiture appears to have been the
Mar country rather than the Tay valley.
But we are still strolling on the right bank of the Tay,
107
Bonnie Scotland
to be followed for a mile or two up to the mouth of the
Almond, a pretty walk, which few strangers find out for
themselves. There is in Scotland a want of the field paths
which Hawthorne so much admired in England, " wander-
ing from stile to stile, along hedges and across broad fields,
and through wooded parks leading you to little hamlets of
thatched cottages, ancient, solitary farmhouses, picturesque
old mills, streamlets, pools, and all those quiet, secret,
unexpected, yet strangely -familiar features of English
scenery that Tennyson shows us in his idylls and eclogues."
Every inch of tillable land is in the north more economic-
ally dealt with ; the farmer, struggling against a harsher
climate, cannot afford to leave shady hedges and winding
paths ; his fields are fenced by uncompromising stone walls
against a looser law of trespass. Embowered lanes, too,
" for whispering lovers made," are rarer in this land of
practical farming. Here it is rather on wild " banks and
braes " of streams, unless where their waters can be coined
into silver as salmon-fishings, that lovers and poets may
ramble at will, shut out from the work-a-day world by
thickets of hawthorn, brier, woodbine, and other "weeds
of glorious feature " :—
The Muse, nae poet ever fand her
Till by himsel' he learned to wander
Adown some trotting burn's meander,
An' no think lang.
If any ill-advised stranger find the streets of the Fair
City dull, as would hardly be his lot on market-day, let
him turn to Kinnoul Hill for a noble scene, and to the
Tay banks for a characteristic one of broad fields and stately
woods, backed by the ridge of the Grampians a dozen
108
The Fair City
miles away. For another sample of Scottish aspects he
might take the Edinburgh road across the South Inch, and
over by Moncrieff Hill to the Bridge of Earn, where he
comes into the lower flats of Strathearn, on which a tamed
Highland stream winds sinuously to the Tay between its
craggy rim and the rounded ridge of the Ochils. The
village has a well-built air, due to the neighbourhood of
Pitkaithly spa, that in Scott's day was a local St. Ronan's,
whose patrons lodged at the Bridge of Earn, or even walked
out from Perth, to take the waters, which before break-
fast, on the top of this exercise, must have had a notable
effect in certain cases. The original Spa in Belgium owed
much of its credit to the fact of its springs being a mile
or two out of the town. Our forefathers' ignorance of
microbes seems to have been tempered by active habits :
it was more than a dozen miles Piscator and his friends
had to trudge from Tottenham before reaching their
morning draught at Hoddesdon. As for Pitkaithly, there
is at present an attempt to resuscitate the use of its waters,
still dispensed near Kilgraston, a house founded by a
Jamaica planter, who had two such sons as General Sir
Hope Grant and Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A.
This part of Strathearn is a flat lowland plain, on which,
once in a way, I have seen a pack of foxhounds, whereas,
in the ruggeder mass of the county, as English squires
must be scandalised to learn —
Though space and law the stag we lend,
Ere hound we slip or bow we bend,
Whoever recked where, how, and when,
The treacherous fox is trapped or slain.
Where foxes are sometimes like wolves for size and
109
Bonnie Scotland
destructiveness, a Highland fox-hunter ranks with a rat-
catcher. But Fife, at hand over the Ochils, is a civilised
region in which Reynard claims his due observance. Near
its border, still in Perthshire, is the sadly-decayed town of
Abernethy, whose Round Tower makes the only monument
of the days when it was a Pictish capital. Another seat
of Pictish princes, not far away, was at Forteviot, near
the Kinnoul Earls' Dupplin Castle, where Edward Balliol
defeated the Regent Mar in a hot fight, before marching
on to Perth to be crowned for a time, when Scotland,
like Brentford, had two kings. If only for their natural
amenities, these spots might well be visited ; yet to tourists
they are unknown unless as way-stations respectively on
the rival North British and Caledonian railways from
Edinburgh to Perth. But to me each of their now obscure
names is dearly familiar, since the days when they were
landmarks on my way back from school, from which in
those days one came back more gladly ; and Auchterarder^
FORTEVIOT, FORGANDENNY, made a crescendo of
joyful sounds, each hailing a stage nearer home.
no
CHAPTER VI
THE HIGHLAND LINE
FROM Perth to Inverness runs the Highland Railway,
that pierces through the heart of the Grampians. Giving
off a branch to Loch Tay and coach routes to other choice
nooks of the noblest northern county, this line mounts
among the wilds of Atholl, and near its highest level
brings us into Inverness-shire ; then it descends to the
old Badenoch Forest, down the upper course of the Spey,
past Kingussie to Aviemore, where its main track turns
over the Findhorn, and by Culloden to the capital of the
Highlands. There is not a finer railway ride in the
kingdom, as the tourist knows well enough from his pro-
grammes, so the Highland line needs no advertisement here.
But there is an older use of this name, for the irregular
line along which the Highlands fall in a broken wave
upon the richer country, a zone pointed out by Scott
and other writers as the most charming part of Scotland.
The austere spirit of mountain solitudes is not so easily
caught as the varied charms of a debateable land, where
" the rivers find their way out of the mountainous region
by the wildest leaps, and through the most romantic
passes," and Nature's rugged features straggle down
in
Bonnie Scotland
among good roads and inns, the practical and the
picturesque throwing each other into alternate relief.
This is the special loveliness of southern and eastern
Perthshire, across which the Grampians make an oblique
border, once too often marked with fire and sword,
while its straths and lake basins repeat in miniature the
same mingling of Highland and Lowland scenery, and
of homes thus contrasted by " Ian Maclaren " : —
" The lowland farm stands amid its neighbours along the high-
way, with square fields, trim fences, slated houses, cultivated after
the most scientific method, and to the last inch, a very type of a
shrewd, thrifty, utilitarian people. The Highland farm is half-
a-dozen patches of as many shapes scattered along the hillside,
wherever there are fewest stones and deepest soil and no bog,
and those the crofter tills as best he can — sometimes getting a
harvest, and sometimes seeing the first snow cover his oats in the
sheaf, sometimes building a rude dyke to keep off the big, brown,
hairy cattle that come down to have a taste of the sweet green
corn, but often finding it best to let his barefooted children be a
fence by day, and at certain seasons to sit up all night himself to
guard his scanty harvest from the forays of the red deer. Some-
where among the patches he builds his low-roofed house, and
thatches it over with straw, on which by and by, grass with
heather and wild flowers begins to grow, till it is not easy to tell
his home from the hill. His farm is but a group of tiny islands
amid a sea of heather that is ever threatening to overwhelm them
with purple spray. Anyone can understand that this man will
be unpractical, dreamy, enthusiastic, the child of the past, the
hero of hopeless causes, the seer of visions."
We have already crossed the Highland line to the
Trossachs. Now, in a few hours' walk by less famous
scenes, let me lead the reader right up into the Highlands
112
THE GRAMPIANS FROM BOAT OF GARTEN,
INVERNESS-SHIRE
The Highland Line
from the North Inch of Perth. Our way shall be the
green banks of the Almond, with only now and then a
turning aside on the roads which are seldom the most
pleasing features of a Scottish countryside. The name,
properly Almaine, as Wordsworth has it, seems of the
same origin as the Irish Bog of Allen, Moine Almhaine
in Celtic. There is more than one Almond in Scotland,
which has countless streams of which this is a type, a
true Highland water, now gathering into creamy pools,
now rushing over pebbly shallows, here pent in a leafy
glen, there rippling by open fields and works of man,
everywhere wilful, cheerful, and eager.
At the Almond mouth, over which it straggles thinly
in summer to join the swirls of the Tay, is believed to
have stood the Roman station that may or may not have
been the original Perth. The tributary's right bank is
edged by a wide sward, up which anglers and other idlers
can stroll freely for miles, unless barred by the red flag
of a rifle range that has sent not a few marksmen to
Wimbledon and Bisley. On this side stands a fragment
of Huntingtower, a castle of the Cowries, widely known
by the song founded on an obscure ballad, with the same
motive as the English " Nut-brown Maid," in which a
high-born lover — supposed to have been a Duke of Atholl
— puts his sweetheart to the test by pretending to take leave,
to be poor, to be already married ; then, when nothing can
shake her fidelity, rewards her with full avowal —
Blair in AtholPs mine, Jeanie!
Little Dunkeld is mine, lassie !
St. Johnston's bower and Huntingtower —
And a' that's mine is thine, lassie !
"3 15
Bonnie Scotland
Here the idle stream is harnessed to service in bleach-
works, whose white ware spread on green slopes makes a
feature of the scenery about Perth. Above the villages
of Almondbank and Pitcairn Green, the stream, like
Simon Glover's apprentice, throws off its industrial
disguise to put on a Highland garb of rocks and dells
and bosky braes. A beautiful spot is the Glen of
Lynedoch, famed by a touching tradition which the
graves of Bessie Bell and Mary Gray attest as no mere
legend. These " bonny lasses, " as their song styles them,
were bosom friends who beside the Almond built them-
selves a bower as refuge from the Great Plague, raging
in Perth as in London. According to the story, they
were visited by a lover who brought them food, and with
it the fatal infection. Prosaic critics point out that such
bowers were used as isolation huts for suspected cases.
At all events, the girls died in their hermitage, and were
brought to be buried at Methven Church, but the
Methven folk stoned back the bearers of contagion from
the ford ; then in death, as in life, the bodies found a
home by the Almond. Their fate was so well though
vaguely remembered, that both Burns and Scott came to
make inquiries about the grave, which had already been
enclosed by the owner of the property, and is now marked
by a railing, beneath a clump of yews, and by the inscrip-
tion " They lived — they loved — they died."
A more modern romance haunts this glen. Here
stands in ruin the deserted mansion of a laird driven by
grief into renown. This was Thomas Graham, who in
the latter part of the eighteenth century devoted himself
to such " improvements " as were then the fashion with
114
KILLIN, PERTHSHIRE
The Highland Line
cultured landowners, and planted exotic growths now
running wild among the native greenery. The death of
his beautiful wife, painted by Gainsborough, struck him
so deeply to heart, that, when over forty years of age,
he went to the wars, and rose to be the Lord Lynedoch
who won the battle of Barossa. He had two other
Peninsular veterans as neighbours, all three of them eye-
witnesses of Sir John Moore's burial at dead of night,
Sir George Murray, Wellington's Quartermaster-General,
and Sir David Baird, of whom it is told that, when his
mother heard how he was among Hyder All's prisoners,
chained two and two, her first remark was, " Lord pity
the chiel that's chained to oor Davie ! " On either side
are scenes of battles long ago : to the south, Methven,
a disaster for Bruce, and its neighbour Ruthven, a victory
for Montrose ; to the north, Luncarty, where the founder
of the Hay family is said to have turned the tide of battle
against the Danes, by rushing in with his plough coulter
like a legendary Nicol Jarvie.
Glenalmond, little sought as it is by strangers, is
better known to many of Mudie's subscribers than they
may be aware, being clearly the chief scene of " Ian
Maclaren's" popular tales, in which, while dwelling so
much on the character of the inhabitants, the author
seems strangely reticent as to natural charms, well hinted
at indeed in the title Bonnie Brier Bush. Drumtochty —
the real name of a farm — is Logic Almond with its
Heriotsfield village ; Kildrummie is Methven ; and
Muirton, of course, is Perth. Some of his personages, also,
appear taken from real prototypes, touched up into very
much of fancy pictures, if neighbours are to be believed.
"5
Bonnie Scotland
A little higher comes Trinity College, Glenalmond,
founded as a buttress to the Scottish Episcopal Church, on
the model of English public schools. Its first head was
Dr. Charles Wordsworth, nephew of the poet, formerly
second master at Winchester, and once tutor to Mr.
Gladstone, with whom his conscientious disagreement in
politics barred the ecclesiastical promotion which he de-
served as well as his brother, Christopher of Lincoln. He
never rose farther than the elective bishopric of the diocese
which it pleases Scottish Episcopalians to style that "of
St. Andrews, Dunkeld, and Dunblane"; and of late years
their prelates have taken to sign themselves by such terri-
torial designations, assumed by men whose legal status in
the country is that of dissenting ministers. When Dr.
Wordsworth became bishop, the whole income of himself
and his score of clergy was some £2000 a year ; but he
had a private endowment in " Wordsworth's Greek
Grammar," which enabled him without shame to give out
from the pulpit, as I have heard, " It is my dooty to
announce to you that a collection will be made in this
chapel, next Sunday, for the purpose of increasing the
income of the Bishop of the diocese." He was a learned
and amiable man, but without much knowledge of human
nature, as shown by his earnest effort to preach an Eirenicon
between his exotic prelacy and Scotch Presbyterianism. In
his memoirs he states that his Glenalmond pupils were the
most Christian and gentlemanly boys he ever knew, on
which let me comment that I have reason for calling some
of them arrant poachers, whom the discipline of early days
did not restrain from going fishing in the " wee short hours
ayont the twal'." He cherishes the recollection that he
116
A MOOR NEAR KILLIN, PERTHSHIRE
The Highland Line
had to expel only three of them, and that these were all
" schismatics." I take him to have been deficient in sense
of humour, to judge by the gusto with which he read
aloud his great-uncle's most droning effusions. He would
probably not have relished a story a friend of mine used
to tell of North- Western Canada. Those wilds, in early
days, were the charge of an Archbishop, who, visiting an
unsophisticated part of his diocese, put up with a Scotch
Presbyterian farmer as owner of the best house in the settle-
ment. This hospitably entertained prelate, remarking how
a newly born baby made part of the family, delicately in-
quired as to whether it had been yet baptized, and hinted
that the parents might like to take advantage of such an
occasion. But the good man seemed not duly pleased by
the honour thus proffered. " I'll just step ben, and see
what the mistress thinks," he said awkwardly ; then
presently returning : " We're both much obliged to ye,
sir — we take it kindly ; we know ye mean well ; but if
ye'll no mind, the mistress would rather wait till a regular
meenister comes round."
The attempt to root a Winchester on the Highland
border did not for a time find much deepness of earth, but
the school has since flourished under other masters. Its
lordly building had the fate of being set on fire by an
unworthy pupil, son of an ex-Minister, whose connections
could not save him from being brought to justice. A
more tragic scandal, now a generation old, was when the
owner of the neighbouring mansion, the second legal dig-
nitary of Scotland, having been convicted of parliamentary
bribery on the previous step of his career, both cut his
throat and threw himself into the Almond. This points
117
Bonnie Scotland
the moral of an abuse that has flourished more rankly in
Scotland than in England, whereby legal posts go as spoils
of party victory, though indeed a better era seems inaugur-
ated by a Conservative Government which recently honoured
itself by giving the highest judicial office to a political
opponent as the most worthy. But we should not get far,
if we are to stop for all the stories of fire and blood that
haunt the Highland line.
Glenalmond now leads us fairly into the Highlands, and
by the river we hold up through the Sma' Glen, or as
Wordsworth calls it, the Narrow Glen, whose lion is the
legendary grave of Ossian, man or myth, that had a more
congenial birthplace in the " tremendous wilds " of Glencoe
declared by Dickens " fearful in their grandeur and amaz-
ing solitude."
In this still place, where murmurs on
But one meek streamlet, only one,
He sang of battles, and the breath
Of stormy war, and violent death ;
And should, methinks, when all was past,
Have rightfully been laid at last
Where rocks were rudely heaped, and rent
As by a spirit turbulent ;
Where sights were rough and sounds were wild,
And every thing unreconciled,
In some complaining, dim retreat
For fear and melancholy meet ;
But this is calm ; there cannot be
A more entire tranquillity.
Our half-day's walk may be prolonged to a whole one
by path up the Almond and across to Loch Tay ; but if
one seek pleasant quarters not so far off, at Newton
118
TN GLENFINLAS, PERTHSHIRE
The Highland Line
Bridge he may turn south by Foulford and Monzie
to CriefF. This cheerful little border town ranks as
favourite sommerfrische of Scots folk, apart from those
places that are more sought by tourists. Well situated,
looking south from the lowest slope of the hills, almost in
the centre of the country, it is unusually dry as well as
airy and genial, not pent in like Callander, nor too bracing
for cold-blooded folk like Braemar. So Crieff has now
two railways and everything handsome about it. Its
spacious market-place proclaims it an old borough, with
tolbooth, cross, and iron "jougs" for the terror of
offenders; and here once the "kind gallows of Crieff"
gave Lowlanders' answer to that high-flown boast —
Aye, by my soul, while on yon plain
The Saxon rears one shock of grain ;
While often thousand herds there strays,
But one along yon river's maze,
The Gael, of plain and river heir,
Shall with strong hand redeem his share !
Why the kind gallows? not even Scott can say, but he
suggests the idea of this seeming a kindred or natural
doom to the Highlanders, who, it is said, used to doff
their bonnets on passing a shrine fatal to so many of their
blood. The gallows have now been well replaced by an
endowed public school on the Scottish pattern ; and
perhaps the most important institution of modern CriefF
is the Hydropathic, which, under the shelter of the Knock
Woods, gathers Saxon and Celt together in sober amity.
There are other such hostelries about the Highland line ;
but that of Crieff, one of the earliest, is still one of the
most popular.
119
Bonnie Scotland
" Hydropathics " in Scotland — nobody thinks of calling
them Establishments — do not much depend on hydro-
pathy, which, in summer at least, falls to the background
of their sociable life. They are more concerned with the
administration of water internally. Where whisky is
devoutly worshipped, there arises a strong nonconformist
party leagued against the devil's sacrament, hence the
vogue of these big temperance hotels, in which unhappy
moral weaklings will be sometimes kept by their families,
while others, conscious of feeble will, are glad to be out
of the way of temptation. In the holiday season, the
better class of townsfolk much affect the wholesome amuse-
ments of such pensions, most of them palatial and some
expensive. And if strong drink be necessary for human
happiness, it is whispered how that can be enjoyed, sub
rosa, even within the walls of a hydropathic, with all
the added zest of a " fearful joy." As the rigour of
Maine laws does not always hinder an American hotel
guest from " seeing the striped pig " or " giving ten cents
to the baby," so here there has been observed such a
demand for " shaving water " at various hours of the
day, that one conscientious manager made a practice
of putting a piece of soap into each jug so required.
Several hydropathics, indeed, have so far relaxed their
original rules as to connive at the appearance of bottles
upon the well -spread table. Certain large ones tend
to become too gay and worldly, patronised by young
swells from Glasgow and Dundee, who take every oppor-
tunity of putting on company manners and evening dress.
But those haunts of ephemeral gaiety find their business
slack off with the holiday season ; and their prosperity
120
•
LOOKING UP GLEN LOCHAY NEAR KILLIN,
PERTHSHIRE
The Highland Line
has not always answered to that of others which stick
to quiet ways and moderate charges.
The Crieff Hydropathic has all along taken a stand
among the latter class, has even had a name for special
austerity, due perhaps to the fact that it is frequented by
Presbyterian ministers, as one at Harrogate is by Roman
Catholic priests. But the Scottish clergy, however
formidable in the pulpit, are by no means reluctant to
unbend out of it, within the limits of becoming mirth,
as we should know from Dean Ramsay ; and I don't
think I ever made one of such a jovial and friendly
congregation as was gathered in this house in the days
when not only strong drink but cards and dancing
were under an interdict. One scandal shocked the
proprieties of the place. The doctor, its guiding genius
and strict censor, had gone to be married. The cat
being thus engaged, the mice took advantage of the
occasion. Returning unexpectedly from his honeymoon,
our moral and medical director found the kids of his
abandoned flock capering in the drawing-room. I shall
never forget the face with which he stood at the door-
way like the statue in Don Juan, then turned away
speechless from sorrow or from anger. His helpless
indignation reminded me of a carter, noted for bad
language, on whom certain graceless loons are said to
have played a trick by stealthily letting down the tilt of
his cart as it tugged up a load of sand ; then they took a
short cut to the hill top and disposed themselves for
listening to his remarks at a safe distance ; but all he
could gasp out on discovering his loss, was, " Rin awa'
hame, laddies : I'm no equal to the occasion ! " Perhaps
121 16
Bonnie Scotland
that new character as a bridegroom softened the doctor's
severe rule. It is said that even Crieff has to some extent
conformed to the world, yet I doubt if its frequenters
have a happier time of it than in those Saturnian days.
One meets queer characters at such a place, " gorgons
and hydros and chimasras dire," as a humorist of
the neighbourhood used to call them. A few real
invalids and some imaginary ones crop up among the
crowd of ruddy and buxom pleasure- seekers. There
was one gentleman, I remember, who gorged himself at
every meal and spent most of the day in snoring about
the public rooms ; but at idle intervals buttonholed all
and sundry to expatiate on his woeful lot of having lost
both sleep and appetite. A rarer hydropathic case, and
a purple patch on the general tone of honest bourgeoisie^
was a still young ne'er-do-weel bearing more than
one of Scotland's honoured names, who had been in,
and out of, two crack regiments, had run through two
fortunes, so he boasted, and looked on himself as heir to
two or three more. Crippled by a drunken fall, his
friends kept him practically imprisoned in this uncon-
genial retreat. His sole luxury was a daily carriage
airing ; and he liked to drive round the grounds of
a certain castle near CriefF, within which the owner, his
uncle, would not let him set foot. It was painful to hear
him talk of what he would do when he came in for
the property. He died before the uncle and the other
kinsfolk from whom he had hoped to inherit, a victim of
that plague through which this country has hardly a house
where there is not one dead, soul or body.
One of the great attractions of CriefF is its being
122
BENEATH THE SLOPES OF BEN LEDI, NEAR CALLANDER,
PERTHSHIRE
The Highland Line
environed by noble and famous mansions, some of their
parks thrown liberally open to visitors. Close at hand
on the Lowland side is Drummond Castle with its grand
woods and gardens, seat of the old family of Perth, that
has had strange vicissitudes : its representative now unites
several titles in that of the Lincolnshire Earl of Ancaster,
while the direct line of the Perth Earls was ruined by its
Jacobite loyalty. On the hills behind are the grounds of
Ochtertyre, which inspired Burns's muse ; and the often-
visited Falls of Turret are, among several cascades, within a
short walk. Behind the Knock lie Ferntower, once home of
Sir David Baird, and Monzie Castle, which strangers must
remember to pronounce with its z silent. Southrons will
have some difficulty also in getting their tongues round the
name of Cultoquhey, famed by the Laird of Cultoquhey's
prayer : " From the greed of the Campbells, from the pride
of the Grahams, from the ire of the Drummonds, and the
wind of the Murrays, Good Lord deliver us ! " This laird's
name was Maxtone, which hints at his having emigrated
from the Borders among such uncongenial neighbours ;
but in the whirligig of time his descendant has taken on
" the pride of the Grahams/' being now Maxtone-Graham,
with Murrays and Drummonds still around him. The
old laird's familiarity with the Litany may be explained by
the fact of Muthill, a village near at hand, having kept for
itself an Episcopal chapel through all adversities, as well
as a parish church with rare relics of Catholic antiquity.
The church and castle of Innerpeffray are other points of
interest in a neighbourhood whose old families seem to
have held their own against English and American in-
vasion; but the Grahams themselves, Highland clan as
123
Bonnie Scotland
they pass for and duly equipped with a tartan, seem to
have come from the south, where Scott puts Roland
Graeme's kin in the Border " Debateable Land."
Of all the lairdly homes about Crieff, the best known
in the world should be Cask, through the several authors
whom the Oliphant family has produced. One daughter
of this house was Lady Nairne, christened Carolina after
the unfortunate prince for whom it had suffered poverty
and exile. There was a Charles also, and George III. is
said to have been tickled to hear how, every day after
dinner, the old laird would turn to his son with <c Charles^
the king's health ! " More than any other writer, by her
Jacobite ballads and her remaniements of popular songs,
" the White Rose of Gask " has inspired a tender sentiment
of the lost cause to thrill so many hearts and piano strings,
long after Scottish royalists had transferred their worship
to such clay idols as George IV. In my youth, indeed,
there were still Perthshire men who spoke more or less
heartily of the Hanoverian " usurpers." I myself was
brought up in a touch of the same sentiment, though that
my father's Jacobitism went not very deep appeared from
the gusto with which he used to tell the tale of his
translating to a lady the inscription on the monument at
St. Peter's dedicated by King George to the " last of the
Stuarts," whereupon a Yankee standing by put in the
remark, " I guess George was right smart to say it was
the last of them ! " Lady Nairne's hereditary feeling for
the Stuarts might not perhaps have endured the test of
experience ; she was a devout Protestant, and in her old
age showed sympathy with the Free Church movement,
which is the antipodes of Jacobitism. So modest was she,
124
A WILD SPOT, KILLIN, PERTHSHIRE
The Highland Line
that for the greater part of her life, her neighbours, and
her own husband, were not aware of her hand in the songs
which had crept into wide popularity. It was taken for
granted that Burns must be the author of her noblest
strain, the " Land o' the Leal," better known than under-
stood, as we remember from Mr. Gladstone's blunder in
confusing heaven and Scotland. " The Laird o' Cockpen,"
" Caller Herrin'," u Will ye no come back again ? " are
other favourites among her songs, grave and gay ; but
her most recurrent theme was that glorified memory that,
like Queen Mary's, can wing a sentiment to pierce the
joints of Scotland's logical armour, —
Charlie is my darling,
The young Chevalier !
Most charming are the walks by the Highland streams
that at Crieff fall into the Earn ; and tempting the longer
excursions on which brakes carry off sociable parties from
the Hydropathic. The railway takes us on up Strathearn
to Comrie, a still more beautiful resort lying on a rich
plain between the wooded heights of Glen Lednock and
" lone Glenartney's hazel shade," by which one might
tramp across to Callander, from the basin of the Tay into
that of the Forth. A prosaic critic observes that there is
no hazel shade in this glen ; but the poet always declined
to " swear to the truth of a song." There is no spot in
Scotland that so well unites lush Lowland charms with
rugged features as Comrie ; and it prides itself on being
the only spot in Britain troubled by earthquakes, several
slight shocks sometimes being felt in a year, which may
bring a stone wall tumbling down, while scaring wild fowl,
125
Bonnie Scotland
making the trout leap in the burns, fluttering the poultry
yard and rattling the plates in the goodwife's kitchen.
A few miles higher up, the Earn debouches from its
Loch at St. Fillans, near which " the stag at eve had drunk
his fill " before being roused by Fitz-James's hounds. I
once made his day's course mainly on foot, but by a more
arduous line over the top of Ben Voirlich, and more-
over without any breakfast till I came upon a shepherd's
shanty in the afternoon ; then instead of being welcomed
at eve by any Lady of the Lake, I found every bed full
at the Trossachs Hotel, as may often be the lot of weary
wight in this much-toured district. Loch Earn, hitherto
a quiet backwater in the stream of travel, has lately been
thrown open by a railway, at its head bringing one to the
Oban line from Gallander, whose lights are now the fiery
cross that " glance like lightning up Strath-Ire."
In the other direction, a road from Crieff goes by the
Sma' Glen to Dunkeld, the gate of the mountains for the
Highland Railway. This resort, as tourists know, is a
kind of Perthshire Buda-Pesth, the old town of Dunkeld
being on the left bank of the Tay, while the station is at
Birnam on the other side. Village seems a fitter title for
Dunkeld than town, yet it might claim to be a city in
right of its Cathedral, whose choir is still the parish church.
This is an ancient sanctuary to which in part was trans-
planted the influence of ruined lona. Gavin Douglas, the
translator of Virgil, was bishop here, but came to die of
the plague in London. With Dunkeld also is connected
the memory of Neil Gow, first of three generations of
fiddlers who for Scotland's artless tunes did what Burns,
Lady Nairne, and other writers did for its songs.
126
THE FALLS OF TUMMEL, PERTHSHIRE
The Highland Line
The Cathedral, as well as the Falls of Braan, the
Rumbling Bridge and other lions are in the grounds of the
Duke of Atholl, the Duke of this part of the world. The
Duke of fifty years ago was a " character " who might
be styled the last of the great Highland chiefs. This
generation may have forgotten the sensation caused by his
trying to shut the way through Glen Tilt, and his personal
encounter with two Cambridge undergraduates, who got the
best of the scrimmage. Among Leech's most effective
sketches in Punch were that " Ducal Dog in the Manger "
and the cartoon in which His Grace appeared playing the
part of Roderick Dhu to the young Sassenachs. It was
said that the Duke took his revenge on the artist by
inviting him to shoot, the highest honour that can be hoped
for in that part of the world ; and in the end the pass was
opened by a chieftain " so late dishonoured and defied."
Since his day the champion obstructionist of this
district was the veteran Sir Robert Menzies, who lately
died much respected in the Rannoch country, in spite of
an extraordinary itch for litigation, with his own family as
well as with strangers. His most famous "ganging law
plea" perhaps was with a railway company that, by the
hands of half-a-dozen porters, had dragged the chieftain
out of a carriage in which his ticket did not entitle him to
ride. The fate of a reverend English tourist who landed
from Loch Rannoch on his grounds was told with a
shudder ; and I must be thankful for my own escape
when caught in the act of more than barefaced trespass in
bounds where stranger was not always " a holy name."
With a friend of mine, in our hot youth, I had gone in to
swim, when on the lake bank we heard a stern voice and
127
Bonnie Scotland
looked back to see Sir Robert's tartans waving over our
clothes. Thus " at advantage ta'en,"
I dare not say that now our blood
Kept on its wont and tempered flood
But the <c dangerous chief," seeing nothing in our Arcadian
innocence to chafe his mood or cloud his brow, turned
off with a courteous salutation — " Doubt not aught from
mine array ! " — and the sun's next glance shone " on
bracken green and cold grey stone."
Across the Tay from Dunkeld, in the old duke's time,
reigned an eccentric laird, to whose taste for building are
due the baronial Birnam Hotel and other costly structures
in the neighbourhood. Mrs. Oliphant hangs the scenes
of a novel about his own empty and unfinished mansion ;
and the chief building among the woods of Murthly is
now an Asylum. As for Birnam Wood, that has long
marched off the face of the earth, to bear out the truth
of Shakespeare's legend ; but one or two ancient trees are
pointed out as stragglers. Birnam was a favourite haunt
of Millais, a keen sportsman as well as lover of the scenery
which forms oases in the later stage of his art, when he
seemed too much concerned to boil that large pot in
Palace Gate.
From Dunkeld it is easy to reach the heart of the
Highlands. A dozen miles of the high road takes us up
to hill-girdled Pitlochrie, and through that pass where
Dundee was shot, as pious souls whispered, with a silver
bullet, while his claymores sheared down the Lowland
soldiers, whose prudent leader, himself from the farthest
north, gained in defeat the lesson to invent a more adapt-
128
DUNKELD AND BIRNAM FROM CRAIGIEBARNS,
PERTHSHIRE
The Highland Line
able bayonet. So terrifying seemed long this Pass of
Killiecrankie that a body of Hessian soldiers, brought
over in the '45, are said to have flatly refused to march
through it. But as usual, the victorious onrush at Killie-
crankie did not carry the tartans far. They were checked
at Dunkeld, dourly defended against them by troops of
sternest temper, that Cameronian regiment raised among
the most stubborn Whigs, who here had their baptism of
fire and their chance of wreaking vengeance for bitter
memories of Claverhouse. Their colonel, Cleland, fell
in this fight with the barelegged foes he had satirised in
verse bristling with scornful hatred of the " Highland
host" brought down as a scourge for the west-country
Covenanters. " They need not strip them when they
whip them ! " the Presbyterian poet exclaims like any
ribald Cockney, and goes on to hint how the upper gar-
ments of such gallows-birds would not be worth the hang-
man's fees. So little love was lost between kindly Scots
of those days, on opposite sides of the Highland line !
Cleland is buried in Dunkeld Cathedral, where Sir
John Steell's modern monument to officers of the 42nd
reminds us how this Perthshire regiment was first
embodied in the Dunkeld district about half a century
after the Revolution, having its origin as the Black
Watch, so called from their dark tartans as distinguished
from the sidier royy red soldier. They were originally
raised to keep the peace on the Highland line, much
as Parfidio Diaz has in our day put down the brigands
of Mexico by enlisting the survivors as Rural Guards ;
but it would be too much to say that such a loyal and
brave corps was made out of the leavings of that kind
129 17
Bonnie Scotland
gallows of Crieff. Some of the private soldiers held
themselves so proudly, that when a party was brought
to show their exercise before George II. and the king
ordered them to be tipped with a guinea apiece, each
man, it is told, re -bestowed this donation upon the
palace porter. Their tartan is a neutral one, forming
the groundwork of several others, for time was when
no Macpherson would don the hated trappings of the
MacTavish. War Office arrangements have played havoc
with this sentiment by sometimes redistributing the
territorial corps in red-tape bundles ; some years ago
a Ross-shire militia battalion tacked on to the Cameron
Highlanders — not to be confused with the west-country
Cameronian regiment — was said not to have a single
Cameron in the ranks, a change from days when Sandy
MacDonalds or John Campbells had to be numbered
in the kindred ranks like a long line of kings. The
good discipline as well as the prowess of Highland
soldiers was remarkable in early days, men of the same
name and birthplace keeping up each other's esprit de
corps, and no praise or punishment being more effectual
than the thought of what might be posted as to a man's
conduct on the door of his parish church.
The raising of Highland regiments, indeed, was
sometimes carried on after the methods of the press-
gang, or by landlords putting pressure on tenants who
might be fathers of stout sons. There is a story of half-
a-dozen brawny Celts tied neck and heels in a cart as
recruits for the Laird of Macnab's u Volunteers " ; and
clansmen have been hunted down in the mountains when
they refused to follow the modern fiery cross. There
'30
A WOODED GORGE, KILLIN, PERTHSHIRE
The Highland Line
would be many a tragic tale of desertion like that of
the " Highland Widow," especially when English martinets
added pipe-clay to Highland accoutrements. But active
lads were seldom backward to follow chief or laird leading
them to war ; then
Bring a Scotsman frae his hill,
Clap in his cheek a Highland gill,
Say, " Such is royal George's will,
And there's the foe ! "
He has nae thought but how to kill
Twa at a blow.
As in the instance of the Cameronians, all Scottish regi-
ments do not wear the kilt ; and of those who do, but few
men are to this manner born in our generation. Alphonse
Daudet puts his little hero " Jack " into a kilt under the
title of costume anglaise^ which is no more absurd than
the way in which English writers speak of this as the
" Scottish dress." There are even Highland Celts whose
ancestors never wore it ; and in its palmy days the kilt
was the " servile dress " of clansmen, whose chiefs as a
rule went in trews. Now it is affected rather by the
upper class ; and the soldiers who swagger so jauntily
in tartans are more like to have grown up in corduroy
breeks. But for this fact, I should have laid down, as
warning to strangers, that the " garb of Old Gaul " can-
not be donned to advantage without youthful familiarity.
The wearing of such a costume, indeed, needs some
practice. A Highland battalion of trews stationed at
Southsea became adopted into a kilted regiment some
twenty years ago, when a corporal and file of men were
detached from the latter as instructors for the neophytes
'31
Bonnie Scotland
how to carry their new honours unblushingly, so as forth-
with to be christened the " South Sea Islanders " by an
^-less populace. The London Scottish Volunteers should
wear the kilt by right of having Highland blood or
Highland property ; and it is enviously whispered that
their qualification in most cases may be the possession of
a tartan paper-knife.
It is, of course, the prowess of our Highland regiments
that has made their dress as dear in Scotland as once
over half of it this was hated and despised. The tartans
are dyed by the blood of a hundred battlefields, as by
memories of green braes and purple moors. Crude and
criant may be some of their colourings, but not more so
than is the tricolour or the Union Jack. Even if the kilt
in its present form were more or less a modern invention,
it is at least older than the Stars and Stripes, and we
know what passionate loyalty that gaudy pattern can call
forth. The other day, I forgathered with a Lowland
Seaforth Highlander, fresh from South Africa, to whom
I communicated a report that the War Office thought of
putting him into trousers. " They daren't ! " he cried,
his eye ablaze with all the fire of Killiecrankie, where his
progenitor might have chosen for the nonce to be equipped
in the lightest running costume.
Strange how the Celtic leaven rises in the stodgy
composition of British nature ! What is this infectious
quality it has ? We are Saxons in business, and well for
us it is so ; but in hours of ease and sentiment we hark
back to the race older on our mother earth. English
settlers in Ireland notoriously become Hibernis Hibemiores
ipsis. English workmen in Welsh quarries, it is said,
132
LOOKING UP THE PASS OF KILLIECRANKIE,
PERTHSHIRE
The Highland Line
learn to speak Welsh rather than their comrades English.
In the long run the stolid Teuton grows to be proud of
his lighter strain. I who write can trace my descent with
unusual clearness back to a Norman adventurer whose pro-
geny appears to have settled for a time in the Breadalbane
Highlands, but long ago came down to opener straths —
The mountain sheep were sweeter,
But the valley sheep were fatter.
The alliances of my kin were for generations with the
English-speaking Lowlands, where their neighbours had
cause to look on the wild Highlandmen as an American
backwoodsman looked on Mohawk or Shawnee warrior.
My forebears " had no use for " kilts, if some perhaps for
dirks and claymores. I know of only one recent strain
of Highland blood, and that at second hand through
England, to make me a Celtic quadroon, so to speak.
Yet there is many a Scot, with no more claim to Highland
lineage than mine, who cannot see the tartan even in a
Princes Street shop-window, or hear the pibroch wailing
over forgotten graves of his father's foes, without a certain
stir of spirit which a biological philosopher might explain
as waves of molecular disturbance propagated through the
nerve centres by vague emotional combinations organised
in the earlier experiences of the race. Boswell confessed
to the same weakness, and what had he to do with the
Highlands ?
Where were we before launching forth into such a
chequered digression on the " lad wi' the philabeg " ? In
the Atholl country, by Loch " Tummel and banks of the
Garry." Above the Pass of Killiecrankie, the pedestrian
'33
Bonnie Scotland
who does not shun a thirty-miles walk to Braemar may
turn off through Glen Tilt, with its gloomy gorges and
snowy falls. But the coach-road to the Cairngorm High-
lands goes from Dunkeld to Blairgowrie, then northward
by the Spittal of Glenshee, the highest highway in Britain,
at one point over 2000 feet, whose " Spittal " was a
Hospital or Hospice that made a Highland St. Bernard's.
I once sought to hire a horse at an inn on this road, but
the landlord explained how it had gone off with " a man
called Morell Mackenzie, who seemed in an awfu' hurry."
That locally unknown celebrity was in haste to an illus-
trious patient on Deeside, an errand that would breed
much bad blood in another country.
The first stage of the journey is lowland rather than
highland, its chief feature being a chain of small lochs,
stocked with perch, on one of which stands Cluny Castle,
cradle of the " Admirable Crichton." Blairgowrie, with
Rattray for its tiny Westminster, rivals Crieff as the
second town in Perthshire, but is not so much a place of
resort, laying itself out rather as an understudy of Dundee
by its flax-spinning mills on the Ericht ; and it seems a
miniature of that longest and busiest of towns, the German
Elberfeld strung out along the Wupper valley. Wildly
romantic still is the walk up the Ericht, whose shaded
pools and rapids, above the town, come down through
a grand gorge overlooked by Craighall, one of several
candidates for the honour of having sat to Scott as
" Tullyveolan." From this gap in the Highland line a
short branch puts us on the main line of the Caledonian
Railway, which competes with the North British as route
to Aberdeen.
J34
KILLIN, HEAD OF LOCH TAY, PERTHSHIRE
The Highland Line
Other Caledonian branches lead off to charming glens
on the old Highland line, now facing east towards the
lowlands of Forfar and Kincardine. But of Alyth, Edzell,
Lochee, one need only say that they lie among sweet and
noble scenes as well worth visiting as others better known
to tourist fame, and that even prosaic Kirriemuir, Mr.
Barrie's " Thrums," is a base for long moorland tramps into
Deeside, over a part of the Highlands as yet innocent
of railways.
'35
CHAPTER VII
"ABERDEEN AWA' ! "
THERE seems no general name to fit a part of Scotland
which has a very marked character, that lowland shelf
lying beyond the Grampians along the Moray Firth, where
the counties of Aberdeen, Banff, Moray, and Nairn are
comparatively flat on the north side, but on the south rise
into grand mountains. The " back end of the Highlands "
would not be a dignified title ; " Moray and Mar " is not
an inclusive one, nor is " Deeside and Speyside." One
seems driven to indicate this as the district of which
Aberdeen is the capital, environed by the " four nations,"
Angus, Mar, Buchan, and Moray, a division of local man-
kind copied by her university from Paris.
Angus alias Forfar, and Kincardine alias the Mearns,
are lowland counties whose streams come down from a
Highland background to a coast-line of broad sandy links
on the Tay estuary, and weatherworn sandstone cliffs
facing the open sea. We might linger here by notable
names beyond Dundee — Arbroath, with its ruined Abbey,
the scene of the Antiquary ; Montrose, that Flemish-like
town that has belied its Cavalier name by rearing such sons
as Andrew Melville, the reformer, and Joseph Hume, the
136
DUNNOTTAR CASTLE, KINCARDINESHIRE
" Aberdeen Awa' ! '
economist; Stonehaven, seat of the Barclays of Ury known
in so different ways ; and Brechin, with its Cathedral and
Round Tower, neighboured by castles old and new. In
this countryside settled the head of W. E. Gladstone's
family, which, however, had moved from some Gledstone or
" Hawk's rock " in the south of Scotland to make fortunes
in England by trade. Sir Thomas, the great Liberal's
brother, was a sound Conservative, of whom is told that
at an election, seeing a son of the soil anxious to salute
him, he stopped his carriage, and accepted a grasp of the
horny hand, qualified by " For the sake o* yer brither ! "
By the wild glens of the North and South Esk let us
pass into Braemar, mountain region of Mar, the very
cream of the Highlands, whose highest summits, Ben
Nevis left out of account, are grouped in the south of
Aberdeenshire. A generation ago Ben Nevis had not
been crowned by revolutionary surveyors, and Ben
Macdhui was still held monarch of Scottish mountains,
keeping his state among the Cairngorms, that here have
half-a-dozen truncated peaks over or hardly under 4000
feet, Ben Muich Dhui, as Gaelic purists would have us
call it, Brae-riach, Cairntoul, the Peak of Cairngorm, Ben-
a-bourd, and Ben A'an, heads of the grandest mountain
mass in the British Isles. This is the native heath of
sturdy Highland stocks, Farquharsons, Macphersons, and
M'Hardys, Durwards, Coutts, and Stuarts, of whose ex-
ploits and traditions more than one book has been written.
The folklorist will not be surprised to find how the legends
of Braemar re-echo those of other lands. Here a crafty
female Ulysses disables a giant and plays off on him a
joking name that puts the stupid fellow to a loss in calling
137 18
Bonnie Scotland
for help. Here a MacTell wins his liberty by shooting at
a mark placed on the head of his wife, with an arrow in
reserve for the tyrant, in case his first aim should not be
true. Here an outlawed David in tartans lays his sword
on the throat of a sleeping Saul, then awakens him to re-
conciliation. Here a squire of low degree comes by his
high-born lass in the end ; and the youngest of three
brothers of course wins the race of fortune, though handi-
capped like a Cinderella.
This majestic crown of Scotland was chosen as the
home of our late Queen, but not then for the first time
had Braemar and its Castleton to do with royalty. If all
tales be true, here was the cradle of Banquo's race, he to
whom the fateful sisters promised a long line of kings,
himself cut off as foretaste of so many violent ends.
Malcolm Canmore, son of Duncan, had a seat at Braemar,
where he often lived with his Saxon wife. He is said to
have founded the autumn gathering, now tamed into a
spick and span show of holiday Highlanders, but in old
days a grand hunting party, more than once an assemblage
for serious purposes. Taylor, the Water Poet, on his
"Penniless Pilgrimage," after being duly rigged out in
tartan, was taken by Lord Mar to the Braemar Hunt,
when under mountains to which this Cockney declares
that " Shooters' Hill, Gad's Hill, Highgate Hill, Hamp-
stead Hill " are but mole-hills —
Through heather, moss, 'mongst frogs and bogs and fogs,
'Mongst craggy cliffs and thunder-battered hills,
Hares, hinds, bucks, roes are chased by men and dogs,
Where two hours' hunting fourscore fat deer kills.
Lowland, your sports are low as are your seat,
The Highland games and minds are truly great !
138
" Aberdeen Awa' ! '
It was under cover of the Braemar hunt of 1715, such
a gathering as a generation later had Captain Waverley
for eye-witness, that Mar hatched the Jacobite rebellion
against George I., of which Scott aptly quotes —
The child may rue that is unborn
The hunting of that day.
When the Pretender's standard was raised at the
Castleton, a hollow of rock by the Linn of Quoich, known
as "the Earl of Mar's Punchbowl," is said to have been
filled with several ankers of spirits, gallons of boiling
water, and hundredweights of honey, a mighty brew in
which to drink success to that unlucky enterprise. In
1745, also, the sons of Mar gave their blood freely to the
cause of the Pretender, though this time their lords were
rather on the Whig side. Jacobite sentiment remained
strong in the district up to our own time. In 1824 was
buried at Castleton Peter Grant, who passed for being
no years old, and probably the last survivor of Culloden.
To his dying day he would never drink the Hanoverian
king's health, yet this constancy seems somewhat marred
by the fact that, like Dr. Johnson, he accepted a pension
from the usurping line. In our time all devotion to
memories of Prince Charlie have been transferred to the
sovereign lady who here would have lived as a private
person, so far as possible, but was sore hindered by the
snobbish curiosity that mobbed her even in the village
church. Not that Highland loyalty is always enlightened,
if we may believe a story told by Mr. George Seton of one
Donald explaining to another the meaning of the Queen's
Jubilee : " When ye're married twenty-five years, that's
'39
Bonnie Scotland
your silver wedding ; and fifty years is your golden
wedding ; and if your man's deid, they ca' it a Jubilee " !
Braemar, indeed, with its bracing air and glorious
mountains, is not for every tourist. Hotels are few and
dear ; there is little accommodation between cot and
castle ; ramblers are not made welcome in the deer forests
around ; and a countryside of illustrious homes cannot be
left open to all and sundry. When royalty be in residence,
there are no doubt keepers on the watch who have to
guard something better than game ; and the trespassing
stranger may find himself under observation as strict as
that of Dartmoor or Portland Island. In the promised
elysium of socialism both palaces and prisons may be
turned into hydropathics ; and Braemar, 1000 feet above
the sea, makes a princely health resort, with no want of
water. But access to this backwater of travel is itself
somewhat prohibitive to the strangers who would scamper
over Scotland in six days. The railway from Aberdeen
comes no farther up the Dee than Ballater. The direct
access to Castleton is that of a long coach drive by the
Spittal of Glenshee. Pedestrians have the best of it in
rough tramps up Glen Tilt or Glen Clova from the south,
or from Aviemore on Speyside, over a pass 2750 feet
high, and with a chance of losing their adventurous way
in Rothiemurchus Forest, where Messrs. Cook's coupons
are of no avail. Once at the village capital of the district,
one can visit most of its lions on pony-back, the Falls of
Corriemulzie and of the Garrawalt, the Linn of Dee, Glen
Cluny and Glen Callater, and even the top of the mighty
Muich Dhui, thus ascended by Queen Victoria. But the
Cairngorms show their jewels rather to him who, like
140
OLD MAR BRIDGE AND LOCHNAGAR, ABERDEENSHIRE
" Aberdeen Awa' ! r
Byron, can roam " a young Highlander o'er the dark
heath," climbing " thy summit, O Morven of snow," and
getting cheerfully drenched among the " steep frowning
glories of dark Lochnagar."
If peer or poet could hasten from these royal
Highlands, Byron's restless muse might rejoice in the
motor cars that now connect Braemar with the fortunate
Deeside railway. Down the strath of Dee, we descend to
the lowland country by beautiful gradations. Past the
old and the new Castles of Braemar, past Invercauld,
Crathie, and Abergeldie, by the "Rock of Firs" and
round the " Rock of Oaks," is the way to Ballater, a neat
little town about a railway terminus, that makes it more
of a popular resort. On the other side of the river are
the chalybeate wells of Pananich, one of those unfamed
spas held in observance by country folk all over Scotland.
It was at a farmhouse here that Byron spent his Aberdeen
school holidays ; and happy should be the schoolboy who
can follow in his steps, forgetting examinations and cricket
averages. But alas ! for the Aberdeen citizen who, on
trades' holidays, seeks this lovely scene when it is veiled
in mist and pelting showers. Him the Invercauld Arms
receives as refuge ; him sometimes a place of sterner
entertainment. There is also a temperance hotel. Over
the Moor of Dinnet, the railway takes us to Aboyne,
another pleasant resort on Deeside, along which we find
hotels for tourists and sportsmen, a hydropathic for health-
seekers, a sanitorium for consumptives, and thickening
villages which, on the lower reaches, become the Richmonds
and Wimbledons of Aberdeen.
The Granite City of Bon Accord, with its old Cathedral
141
Bonnie Scotland
and Colleges, if for a little overgrown by that upstart
Dundee, comes after Edinburgh and Glasgow in dignity,
well deserving such attention as Dr. Johnson gave to its
lions. It has shifted its site from the Don towards the
Dee, between whose mouths it almost touches the sands,
and golf and sea bathing are among its pleasures, while in
an hour the Deeside railway runs one up into the High-
lands. The old town has here dwindled to a suburb, the
new one laid out with striking regularity and solidity,
relieved by such nooks as the Denburn Gardens, across
which Union Street reaches by the tower of the Town
Hall to Castlegate and the Cross, where a colossal statue
of the last Duke of Gordon and an imposing block of
Salvation Army buildings represent a contrast of old and
new times.
The Aberdonians, as is known, pride themselves on a
hard-headedness answering to their native granite. The
legend goes that an Englishman once attempted to defraud
these far northerners, but the charge against him was scorn-
fully dismissed by an Aberdeen bailie : "The man must be
daft!" By the rest of Scotland, Aberdeen is looked on as
concentrating its qualities of pawkiness, canniness, and
thrawnness ; the Edinburgh man cracks upon it the same
sort of jokes as the Cockney upon Scotland in general.
The accent and dialect of this corner, strongly flavoured
with Norse origin and sharp sea-breezes, are quite peculiar.
Norse origin, I have said — and this has been held the
main stock ; but a recent anthropological examination
seems to show that even in seaward Buchan only a minority
of the school children are fair-haired. This sketch has
nothing for it but resolutely to forswear all such upsetting
142
" Aberdeen Awa 1 r
inquiries, which nowadays go so far as to deny that any
part of Scotland was purely Celtic, and may some day
prove us the original strain of Adam, whose migration
from Paradise to replenish the whole earth would be quite
consistent with a birthright in " Aberdeen awa' ! "
Aberdeenshire is on the whole a matter-of-fact county,
by industry rich in "horn and corn," not without its
pleasant nooks, and on the south rising into those royalest
Highlands. Buchan, the most Aberdeenish part of
Aberdeen, has a grandly rugged coast, with the cauldron
called the Buller of Buchan, and the Dripping Cave of
Slains for famous points, till lately much out of the way
of travel, but now a railway opens the golf links of
Cruden Bay, between the old and the new Slains Castles,
whose lord, as Boswell observed, has the king of Denmark
for nearest north-eastern neighbour to the High Constable
of Scotland. Beyond, at this bleak corner, come the fishing
towns of Peterhead and Fraser burgh, where Erasers are as
thick as blackberries, their name, along the coast, being
no distinction without a tee-rame (agnomen) by which a
prosperous fisherman may sign his cheques, or an ill-doing
one be haled before the sheriff.
Inland, Aberdeen is rather the country of the gay
Gordons, no real Hielandmen,but emigrants from the south,
of whom it is not for me to say good words, inasmuch as
I am kin to their hereditary neighbours, which is as much
as to say enemies, the Forbes. Yet, " in spite of spite,"
one must admit that the Gordons flourish here, as on their
native borderland, in Poland, in Russia, indeed all over
the world. The " Cock of the North " has cause not to
crow so boldly as of yore ; and regiments cannot now be
H3
Bonnie Scotland
raised by bounty of a Gordon Duchess' kisses ; but no less
than three noble houses of the name have seats in this
region, lordliest among them Gordon Castle, the northern
Goodwood.
The interior of this promontory has a prevailing aspect
of prosperous commonplace ; but here, too, are patches of
romance and superstition. Turriff, for instance, looks as
quiet a little town as any in the kingdom, yet at the Trot
of Turriff was shed the first blood of our civil wars. A pool
in the river has a wild legend of family plate thrown into
it in those troubled times and found in guard of the devil
by one who dived for its recovery. This is a legend of
Gicht, the home of Byron's mother, that also has the
subterranean passage of tradition, explored by so many a
piper, whose strains were heard dying away underfoot till
they went silent in what uncanny world ! Near Gicht,
Fyvie Castle contains a secret chamber which must not be
opened on pain of the laird's death, and a stone that weeps
for any approaching calamity to his house. There came
a new laird from London, a man of metropolitan scepticism,
nay, even a teetotaller, who regaled his scandalised neigh-
bours with zoedone and such like. He was reported to
have given out an intention of opening the secret chamber,
but when pressed to do so in presence of certain local
dignitaries, he turned it off with a laugh. Mark the
sequel : this gentleman died suddenly very soon afterwards,
so he might have opened the fateful chamber whatever.
One of the treasures of the castle, a scrap of faded tartan
from Prince Charlie's plaid, reverently preserved under a
glass case, was being exhibited to me by the parish
minister, when he felt himself tapped on the shoulder by
144
I
BALMORAL, ABERDEENSHIRE
" Aberdeen Awa ! '
the laird : " Did I hear you say the Pretender ? " — a
softened form of Lady Strangers rebuke for the same lapse,
" Pretender, forsooth, and be dawmed to ye ! " Another
family in this district is believed, and believes itself, never
to have thriven since its head was cursed by a Macdonald
massacred in Glencoe. These are but samples of the old-
world ideas that turn up in the soil so carefully tilled by
Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk.
Maybe the reader has never heard of Johnny Gibb —
then the loss is his. This book is well known in Scotland
as a head of the "kailyard" school that has flourished
here since the days of Gait, though only of late some
caprice of taste gave it a vogue in the south. The
examples most popular in England do not always commend
themselves to Scotsmen, who find one and another aspect
of their character overcharged to move the sighs or grins
of barren readers. At home is better appreciated such a
writer as William Alexander, who, risen from herd loon
to editor of an Aberdeen paper, knew his countryfolk
thoroughly, and depicted them with an art that never
oversteps the modesty of nature. One can hardly press
Johnny Gibb on a stranger, weighted as he is with an
uncouth dialect and with a serious stiffening of Disruption
principles. But, to my mind, if Dr. John Brown had not
written Rab and his Friends y William Alexander's Life
among my ain Folk would be the flower of the kailyard : a
collection of humble Aberdeenshire idylls, as seen by a
shrewdly humorous eye, which can soften in not overstrained
sentiment when it regards the "little wee little anes" and
" wee bit wifickies " that draw from sons of a hard soil
such endearing diminutives so characteristic of their wind-
US 19
Bonnie Scotland
bitten speech. If I am not mistaken, George Eliot's
Scenes of Clerical Life may have set a copy for these
round-hand pages, not to be taken as lessons in spelling,
for only too faithfully do they reproduce the local dialect.
Johnny Gibb deals with the essence of Presbyter-
ianism, as distilled in Aberdeenshire Strathbogie during
the non -intrusion controversy. But this part of the
country is, in fact, much divided as to religious sentiment.
About Aberdeen, the old Episcopal church is still rooted
in the soil, elsewhere in Scotland rather a greenhouse
plant. The Covenanters made war upon this prelatic
city, and in its county Montrose brewed the storm
that swept down upon Whigamore strongholds. Here-
abouts it was Presbyterian divines who, after the Revolution
Settlement, had sometimes to be inducted at the bayonet's
point upon unwilling parishioners ; then Cumberland's
soldiers marching to Culloden could find plenty of sport
in burning non-juring meeting-houses. The Roman
Catholic element is still strong also, especially in the
Highland part, many of the clans, from Aberdeen across
to Skye, having stuck to the old faith. The Frasers have
two heads, him of the Lovat branch a Catholic, but his
namesake of Saltoun a Protestant. Blairs College on
Deeside is a notable Catholic seminary, containing fine
portraits of Queen Mary and Cardinal Beaton. The
Roman Cathedral of Aberdeen has no cause to hide itself,
but stands up boldly among its Free Church neighbours.
In some parts of Scotland, a Papist is looked on askance,
but in this northern belt, the two creeds have come to a
modus vivendi, the parish minister perhaps saying grace
before dinner and the priest returning thanks.
146
u Aberdeen Awa' ! r
On the same shoulder of Scotland a similar contrast
is shown in the matter of climate. The point of Buchan
ended by Kinnaird Head has the name of being the
coldest part of the kingdom, but farther up the Moray
Firth, the counties of Moray and Nairn are so situated
and sheltered as to be more genial than most of England.
Forres, which Shakespeare vainly imagined as a bleak
and blasted heath " fit for murders, treasons, stratagems,"
has in fact the mean climate of London, cooler in
summer, warmer in winter ; and the whole district vies
with East Norfolk for the honour of being Britain's
driest corner, so that the Forres Hydropathic, with its
miles of pine-wood walks, makes both a winter and a
summer resort, while a light and porous soil supports fat
farming.
The country has many beauty spots also, even among
its lowland features, swelling to the Highlands of Brae
Moray, from which Wolves of Badenoch once swept
down upon its folds as Roderick Dhus upon the Forth's
"waving fields and pastures green." The Findhorn, in
whose valley Gordons and Cummings have met lovingly,
Professor Blackie calls " one of the finest stretches of
dark mountain water and picturesque wood in the
Highlands." Mr. Charles St. John is eloquent in praise
of this river, where he made so careful studies in natural
history. Rising in a wild solitude, it leaves the open
ground to hide its charms among noble forests and
beneath steep cliffs, at whose foot the angler may have to
run for his life, its sudden spates now pressed up in a gorge
a few feet wide, then making a bore-like wave on such a
dark basin as that of the old Bridge of Dulsie, " shut in
Bonnie Scotland
by grey and fantastic rocks, surmounted with the green-
est of grass swards, with clumps of the ancient weeping
birches with their gnarled and twisted stems, backed
again by the dark pine trees. The river here forms a
succession of very black and deep pools, connected with
each other by foaming and whirling falls and currents,
up which in the fine, pure evenings you may see salmon
making curious leaps." Another notable reach shows the
grounds of Altyre with its heronry. From these wooded
gorges, so rich in finned and feathered life, the river
emerges on a tamer plain, to enter the sea by the Sahara
of Culbin, a singular coast-line, where cultivated fields
have been long ago overwhelmed by sandhills, banks of
shingle, and piles of stones, all barren but for patches of
bent and broom, sheltering huge foxes, hares, and rabbits,
that sally forth to prey upon the farms behind, like any
Highland chieftain. Moray and Nairn thus present a
fine variety of scenery, dotted by ancient mansions like
Darnaway Castle, with its hall that holds a thousand
armed men, and Cawdor Castle, which one legend makes
the scene of Macbeth's murder. No part of Scotland
indeed, has more ruined shrines and strongholds than the
old Moravia, a name once extending beyond the present
bounds of Moray alias Elgin.
Elgin, the town, built of a warm, yellow sandstone that
helps it to a cheerful look, may call itself a city in right
of what seems to have been the noblest Cathedral in
Scotland, violated by wild Highlandmen when this low-
land strip too much invited plunder and ravage. The
town has other ruins to show, besides those of Pluscarden
Priory some miles off, and of Spynie Palace on the way
148
STRATH GLASS, INVERNESS-SHIRE
" Aberdeen Awa' ! '
to Lossiemouth, Elgin's rising bathing-place, whose name
should be familiar to readers of George MacDonald's
novels. A little farther along the coast, Nairn, which a
Scots king boasted for so long as to have one end in the
Highlands, the other in the Lowlands, is now able
to hold itself up as the " Brighton of the North,"
recommended by a mild climate, and by golf-links on
the shore, not perched on diabolic downs, as behind the
Londoner's resort.
Gouty southrons may well find their way so far north,
but they do ill to pass by the recesses of this country,
now that the Highland Railway cuts straight across from
Aviemore to Inverness. Grantown above Speyside, indeed,
is much sought as a high and dry health resort. Another
place that begins to put in a claim to the same favour is
Tomintoul, at the south end of Banff, the loftiest village
in the Highlands, a hundred feet or so higher than
Buxton, and with a chalybeate well that would work
fashionable cures if it could only get a London doctor to
patronise it, while the sub-Alpine site and the mainly
Catholic population might help to give an illusion of
Swillingheim - am - Fluss or Argent les Eaux. A very
illustrious author expressed the picturesqueness of Tomin-
toul by calling it the " dirtiest, poorest village in the
whole of the Highlands," but that was a generation ago,
and the Tomintoulers are not likely to insist on perpetu-
ating such a compliment, as Aberdeen solicitors to this
day take the higher style of Advocates, because once so
addressed by King James. A more famous spring, as
yet, of this region rises in a distillery which does not want
a vales sacer —
149
Bonnie Scotland
Fairshon had a son who married Noah's daughter,
And nearly spoilt ta Flood, by drinking up ta water,
Which he would have done, I verily believe it,
Had ta mixture been only half Glenlivet.
But we have jumped over Ban IF, which may resent
being taken for an appendage of Aberdeen, — long, narrow
strip squeezed in between Moray and Mar, as it runs up
from its northern cliff face, set with fishing villages, to
the grand Highlands of Deeside. Banff has a bad name
among Scottish counties for a certain fault of morals
which has been charged upon all Scotland, though as a
matter of fact it attaches only to some parts, and pleas
may be given in excuse : for one, the custom of such
irregular unions as under the name of " handfasting "
were long winked at in this corner ; for another, the
accommodating Scottish law that wipes out by legal
marriage a transgression too lightly treated by local
opinion, as not by Jean Armour's lover when, now
and then, his song turned out a sermon. In other
respects Banff may pose as a homespun Arcadia. Some
twenty years ago, when I knew it, there were not thirty
policemen in the whole county, and the county town was
hard put to it to confine prisoners for a single night.
The only familiar crime was that wont to be solemnly
indicted before the Sheriff as " Making a great noise,
opposite, or nearly opposite the Free Church Manse,
cursing and swearing, and challenging to fight," i.e.
in the blunter English of southern police courts, being
drunk and disorderly ; then it would be a point of legal
acumen not to fine the almost always repentantly avowing
offender more than he was likely to have at command.
150
" Aberdeen Awa' ! '
The authorities stood in dread that some Englishman
or the like would break the law more seriously, as
happened when a vagrant conjuror with an Italian name,
but speaking in a strong Whitechapel accent, conjured
a pair of boots into his illegal possession, and had to be
sent all the way to Elgin at the expense of the county.
Later on, Banff got a jail of its own opened, which I one
day visited and found the only captive sociably doing
a job of work for the keeper's wife. One case of theft,
indeed, was not unknown, that of boys brought into
illicit relations with apples or the like ; but when an
urchin was sentenced to be whipped for such puerile
weakness, the small police force, with the fear of his
mother in their eyes, struck, or rather refused to strike,
and I believe the culprit went scot-free.
The absence of vulgar crime is still more marked in
the Highlands, where, but for whisky and religious zeal,
there would be little need of magistrates. " Ye see, if
they stole anything, they couldn't get it off the island," a
Bute cynic once explained to me ; but on the mainland
opposite, I have known the ladies of a family leave their
bathing dress hanging over the hedge by the roadside
for weeks together. It was only on the grand and gallant
scale that John Highlandman made a confusion between
meum and tuum. But a distinctly litigious disposition in
trifles keeps northern lawyers from starving among clients
who, like Bartoline Saddletree and Peter Peebles, often
cherish a strong amateur interest in law. In Dandie
Dinmont's country, we know, a man was " aye the better
thought o' for having been afore the Feifteen."
Now that everybody subscribes to an Encyclopaedia, it
Bonnie Scotland
may not be necessary to remind readers how the Scots law
is founded on the Roman, and how the practice of courts
differs north and south of the Tweed. The administra-
tion of justice in Scotland seems now an example to
England, whatever it may have been in the past.
Feudalism died slow here. Baron courts continued to be
held to our own day, though shorn of such unjust
privilege as that by which the lord's bailie decided ques-
tions between himself and his tenants. There was a time
when only high treason was withheld from the jurisdiction
of these private Solons. Then they lost power to ad-
judicate in the " four pleas of the crown," — murder, rape,
robbery, and arson, unless in the case of the slayer taken
red-hand or the thief infang with the stolen property in
his possession within the barony bounds. So late as
1707 Lord Drummond was good enough to " lend " his
executioner to the city of Perth. After Culloden, heredi-
tary judges like the Baron of Bradwardine were wholly
deprived of the right of furca et fossa, the drowning of
female and hanging of male offenders. Yet a generation
ago the dispensers of minor justice in certain towns were
the " bailies " of the superior, whom in one case I have
known to be an Australian squatter and his distant deputy
a respectable carpenter, while in such a town as Dalkeith,
the Duke of Buccleuch appointed an able lawyer as
permanent magistrate. The adoption of the Police Act
brought this state of things to an end ; and the baron's
judicial rights, if not formally abolished, have practically
dwindled out of existence.
The part of police magistrate and county court judge
is doubled by the sheriff, an official whose title may be a
152
A PEEP OF THE GRAMPIANS,
INVERNESS-SHIRE
" Aberdeen Awa5 ! ?:
stumbling-block to Englishmen, and still more to inquir-
ing foreigners like Count Smalltork. Nothing is apter
to perplex our Continental neighbours than the irregulari-
ties of our constitution, the overlapping of boundaries,
the general want of such symmetrical and consistent
arrangement as recommends itself to the Latin or the
well -drilled Teuton mind. What a pitfall for the
foreign student of our institutions lies in the fact of a
sheriff being an honorary dignitary in an English county,
an elected constable in an American one, but a paid and
permanent judge north of the Tweed ! The shire reeves
here were in feudal times hereditary lieutenants of the
Crown, who, as the baron handed over judicial authority
to his clerkly bailie, appointed legal representatives, still
entitled Sheriffs Depute, also known as Sheriffs Principal,
as they have come to be. These well-paid offices are
prizes of the bar, held by successful advocates in Edin-
burgh, who only in special cases or by way of appeal
are called to judgment. The everyday work of minor
justice, civil and criminal, is done by resident paid officials,
called Sheriffs Substitute, each, in his own district, wearing
a halo of authority as " the Sheriff,'1 usually an advocate
who has resigned the risks of practice to devote himself to
this safer if less ambitious career, as is the case with the
French magistracy. There are also Justices of the Peace,
as in England, but these do not come so much before the
public.
It need hardly be said that such a professional judge,
assisted in important criminal cases by a jury, and checked
in civil suits by right of appeal to his principal, makes a
clearer fountain of justice than the Great Unpaid of an
153 20
Bonnie Scotland
English Bench, who with the best intentions as to fairness
must often depend on their clerk for law. In some points
of procedure, too, the Scottish system sets a good example
to the English. Prosecutions are not left in private hands,
but are conducted by a public official. The Procurator-
Fiscal is the Attorney-General of the Sheriff's Court, also
performing the duties of Coroner without the meddling of
a jury or reporters, though in late years public inquests in
certain cases of death have been introduced into Scottish
practice. Petty offenders are disposed of by the Sheriff
off-hand. More serious charges he remits to the con-
sideration of the Crown officers in Edinburgh, who decide
before what court the prisoner shall be tried. The first
step is his being brought to private audience of the Sheriff,
who, taking care that he do not prejudice his cause, invites
him to tell his story, often the only way of getting at the
real facts. Another practical arrangement is that of a
" pleading diet," at which criminals with no defence have
a chance of submitting to the law and being sentenced
with as little ado as may be.
While certain crimes, made heinous by the law of
Moses, are still marked on the Scottish statute-book as to
be punished with Draconian severity, and while in " good
old days" the gallows, the lash, and the branding-iron
were as freely used as south of the Border, the adminis-
tration of the law here has come to be notably mild.
Executions are rare, as, indeed, are cases of premeditated
murder. In criminal trials, a Scottish jury numbers
fifteen, and their verdict is that of the majority. Perhaps
a deeper sense of the issues of life and death begets a
stronger reluctance to send a fellow-man to the scaffold,
'54
" Aberdeen Awa' ! '
and often prompts the verdict of " Not proven," by which
so many a criminal goes free yet hardly stainless.
From Aberdeen to Inverness there are three railway
routes over an entanglement of Highland Railway and
Great North of Scotland branches that have their main
knot at Elgin. One line runs from Banff along the
Moray Firth, giving fine views across to the opposite shore
of Cromarty. Another turns up the Spey, and by this
beautiful strath would bring us into the heart of the
Highlands. The Speyside line considerately does not
hurry passengers through its picturesque environments.
There is a legend about this railway that the town council
of Elgin — no wiser in their generation than Oxford and
Cheltenham — sent up to London a deputation to oppose it
in Parliament, when a Cockney crier made such strange
work of the names Elgin and Craigellachie, that the
worthy citizens sat on unconscious that the bill was being
passed without question.
The Speyside line has ways of its own, or had in former
days, when I once remonstrated with a clerk who had
given me, unasked, a return ticket, and he drily answered,
" Ye needn't take a return unless ye like ; but it's
cheaper " — as it was, by five shillings ! At one stage of
our journey, the meeting of a Presbytery or some such
function swelled the company in the single carriage to
nearly a score, which so much exercised the mind of an
elder that I heard him remark to a minister, "Doesna
this remind ye, sir, of the saying of Daniel the prophet,
* many shall run to and fro ' ? " As if exhausted by its
unusual burden, the train stopped some couple of hours at
Craigellachie, giving one time to make a " Spey cast," but
155
Bonnie Scotland
for the want of license and tackle. At the end of nearly
a day's journey from Banff, I reached the Boat of Garten,
too late for any southward train that evening. Like other
" boats " and " bridges " of the Highlands, this has a snug
little inn, enlarged I fancy since then, when it had only
one good bedroom, in which more than one crowned head
has lain to rest. A friend of mine was occupying this
when a telegram announced the arrival of the Empress
of the French. Of course he turned out, then the people
of the house sought his advice in adorning the chamber.
He found them hastily fastening up over the Empress' bed
their most striking work of art, which happened to be a
picture of the battle of Waterloo ! Much more like
Celtic courtesy was the conduct of William Black's High-
land veteran, who scrupled to wear his tartan trews before
a Frenchwoman, for fear of reviving sore memories.
CHAPTER VIII
TO JOHN o' GROAT'S HOUSE
UNLESS for that modern knight-errant, the cyclist, speed-
ing to achieve the quest of John o' Groat's House, the far
northern Highlands seem as unduly neglected by tourists
as the southern mountains of Wales. Yet across the
Moray Firth, that half insulates the north end of Britain,
lie charms and grandeurs none the less admirable for
being somewhat out of the scope of tourist tickets. The
best face of this region it turns to adventurers who brave
the Hebridean seas ; but also it has winning smiles and
impressive frowns for those who on the east side follow
the Highland line to its Pillars of Hercules.
The railway to the far north begins by running west-
ward from Inverness to round the inner basin of the
Moray Firth at Beauly, indeed a Beau lieu. Here, beside
the ruins of a priory, is a seat of Lord Lovat, whose
shifty ancestor, after Culloden, lurked for six weeks in a
secret chamber of Cawdor Castle, but was finally run
down in a hollow tree after adventures trying for the age
of fourscore and four. The falls of Kilmorack make
perhaps the finest point in a district full of attraction.
Gilliechrist is noted for a grim story that does not go
157
Bonnie Scotland
without question : in the church here a congregation
of Mackenzies is said to have been burned alive, to
the sound of the bagpipes, by their Christian enemies
of Glengarry, a memory of ancient manners which
Wordsworth laments as ''withering to the root." One
of Lord Lovat's hiding-places was an island in the river,
that afterwards became a summer retreat of Sir Robert
Peel ; and its romantic cottage was for a time the home
of the two Sobieski or Allan brothers who made a
mysterious claim to represent the Stuarts, and were treated
with royal honours by some Scottish families. They
were a stately pair, after a somewhat theatrical style,
taking the part of silent Pretenders in the Highland
dress, on which they published a sumptuous volume.
In later years, when both were well-known figures in
the Reading-room of the British Museum, they, or at
least one of them, came down to lodgings in Pimlico,
where I have heard pseudo-majesty calling for his boots
from the upper floor like a dignified Fred Bayham.
All this part of the railway is set among varied beauty,
as it bends away from the western mountains and curves
about the heads of the deep eastern firths. Beyond
Beauly, it crosses the neck of the peninsula called the
Black Isle, on which stand the ex- cathedral city of
Fortrose, and Cromarty on the deep inlet guarded by its
cave-worn Sutors, where one can ferry over the mouth of
this Cromarty Firth to the farther promontory, ended by
one of Scotland's several " Tarbets," name denoting an
isthmus or portage. Cromarty no longer exists as a separ-
ate and much-separated county, of which Macbeth seems
to have been Maormor or satrap. Before the boundary
THE RIVER GLASS NEAR BEAULY,
INVERNESS-SHIRE
To John o' Groat's House
adjustment in oar generation, several Scottish shires had out-
lying fragments i^lan^e^ within their neighbours' bounds,
an arrangement probably due to t^* intrigues of interested
nobles ; but this one was all disjecta membra^ the largest
lying away up in the north-west corner of Ross, with which
environing county Cromarty is now incorporated. The
county town, at the point of the Bkck Isle, still flourishes
in a modest way, after shifting its site so that the Cross
had to be bodily removed. It has reared at least two
notable sons, one that literary Cavalier Sir Thomas
Urquhart, who so well translated Rabelais while a prisoner
in the Tower, whence he published other ingenious works
that but feebly represent his industry, for some hundreds
of his manuscripts, lost at the battle of Worcester, went to
such base uses as lighting the pipes of Roundhead troopers.
The other was Hugh Miller, the stone-mason's apprentice,
who rose to be an esteemed author, a geologist of note, and
editor of the Witntu^ that full-toned organ that lifted with
no uncertain sound the testimony of the Free Church.
This end of Scotland, like the south-west, has been
strongly Whig in its sympathies. Even its Highland
clans were often led by their chiefs to support the
Protestant succession. It was a Mackay who commanded
for King William against Claverhouse ; the Munroes did
service to King George against the Pretender; and
President Forbes of Culloden kept the Mackenzies, or
many of them, from joining the prince, who at his mansion
spent a last quiet night on Scottish soil. Hugh Miller
teDs us how the Cromarty folk watched the smoke of
Culloden across the Firth, of their rejoicing for Comber-
land's victory, and of their savage exultation over Lovat's
159
Bonnie Scotland
head. Religious enthusiasm here was kin to that of the
Covenanters. To the south, as we have seen, lies a belt
of Catholicism ; and some glens of the Highlands shelter
knots of Episcopacy ; but when the Gael does take to
Presbyterianism, he likes it hot and strong. This was
the diocese of the " Men," those inquisitorial elders who
played such a severe part in church life of older days.
The Free Church movement found great acceptation in
the Highlands, so much so that in many parishes the Old
Kirk has been almost deserted. And the Free Church
in the far north is still largely officered by a school of
ministers, who, fervidly rejecting the conclusions of
criticism and latitudinarian liberality, are known as the
" Highland host," by humorous inversion of a phrase
that once applied to an instrument of the prelatical party.
The recent broadening of this body's base has here been
fiercely resisted, some congregations even coming to blows
over Disruption principles. There was a time when the
Sabbath could be said not to come above the Pass of
Killiecrankie ; but now the northern Highlands are the
fastness of a Sabbatarianism that dies hard all over rural
Scotland. In Ross, the late Queen Victoria had the un-
wonted experience of being refused horses for a Sunday
journey by a postmaster incarnating the spirit of John
Knox ; then it is understood that Her Majesty gave
directions he should in no way suffer for conscience' sake.
There were " godly " lords in these parts, to whose
influence Hugh Miller attributes this temper of faith ;
and here was the diocese of that " Black John," the
"Apostle of the North," whose field-preachings stirred
the bones of martyrs to old prelatic tyranny.
1 60
:
To John o' Groat's House
It is no wonder that Hugh Miller became a champion
of the Free Church in its pristine glow. Alas ! his
promising career was cut short by his own hand. It is
believed that the trial of reconciling the Mosaic geology
with advancing science proved too much for his brain.
Had his lot been cast in our generation, divines of his
own beloved communion would have taught him more
accommodating interpretations, that might have helped to
a longer lease of usefulness one of Scotland's many self-
taught sons, whose Schools and Schoolmasters remains the
best book on this countryside.
At Dingwall, the little county town of Ross, which, like
the Devonshire Torrington, has been fondly thought to
resemble Jerusalem in site, a short branch line turns west-
ward to Strathpeffer, the Scottish Harrogate, thriving apace
since it got a railway. Till then its clients were chiefly
local, many of them seeking an antidote to more potent
waters distilled hereabouts ; but now in the later part of
the season it is crowded with visitors from both sides of
the Border. Strathpeffer has varied advantages to bring
patients all the way from London. It boasts the strongest
sulphur water in the kingdom, also such an effervescing
chalybeate spring as is rarer in Britain than in Germany ;
it has adopted peat baths, douches, and other balneo-
logical devices from the Continent ; while a remarkably
good climate helps it to distinction among northern spas.
It is sheltered by mountains from the wet and windy
west ; then its show of flourishing crofts, originally granted
to a disbanded Highland regiment, attests a genial summer ;
and beside the Pump-room Highland Eves tempt the
drinkers with tantalising piles of strawberries, forbidden
161 21
Bonnie Scotland
by the faculty as plum-pudding at Kissingen ; but it is to
be feared that British invalids are less docile to Kurgemass
rules. The village lies in a valley begirt by charming
scenery of " dwarf Highlands " about the course of the
Conon and other streams. Hugh Miller worked here as
a mason lad, and his " recollections of this rich tract of
country, with its woods and towers and noble river, seem as
if bathed in the rich light of gorgeous sunsets." The
long summer evenings light up patches of heather over
which is the way to such beauty spots as Loch Achilty, the
Falls of Conon, and the Falls of Rogie, that have been
compared to Tivoli. Close at hand is Castle Leod, famed
for enormous Spanish chestnuts that give the lie to Dr.
Johnson ; and farther off are other ancient mansions,
Brahan Castle, whose gardens were laid out by Paxton ;
Coul with its fine grounds, and the spectral ruin of Fairburn
Tower. Above the village the wooded ridge of the Cat's
Back leads to a noble view from green Knockfarril, where
is perhaps the best of the " vitrified forts " so common in the
far north. Rheumatic patients would once celebrate their
cure by dancing a Highland fling before the Pump-room, a
saltatory exercise said to have originated in the experience
of a kilt among midges. To prove themselves sound in
wind and limb, Sassenach visitors might ascend Ben Wyvis,
the " Mount of Storms," a ten-miles tramp or pony ride.
There is no difficulty on the way unless a bog at the bottom,
that must be skirted in wet weather ; and the prospect from
the top is rarely extensive in proportion to the trouble of
reaching it : on a fine day may be seen the mountains of
Argyll, of Braemar, of Sutherland, and of Skye, perhaps
grandly half revealed through distant haze or thunderstorm,
162
MOOR OF RANNOCH, PERTHSHIRE AND
ARGYLLSHIRE
To John o' Groat's House
At Dingwali diverges also the branch line to Lochalsh,
the ferry for Skye. This takes one through a real High-
land country, where at Auchnasheen goes off the coach
route to Loch Maree, which some judge the finest scene
in Scotland. Less smiling than Loch Lomond, it lies
more wildly among naked pyramids of quartz, Ben Slioch
the most conspicuous point of them, but this lake has the
same beauty of wooded islets at the lower end, where a
group of half-drowned hillocks " form a miniature archi-
pelago, grey with lichened stone, and bosky with birch
and hazel." On one of these are the ruins of a chapel of
the Virgin Mary, who was perhaps godmother to Loch
Maree. Beyond it open the sea-inlets Torridon, Gairloch,
and Loch Ewe ; and the coast northwards by Ullapool
and Loch Inver is pierced by deep fiords and overlooked
by grand summits, worn down from Himalayan masses
of old. On the road from Garve to Ullapool, beside the
strath looking down to Loch Broom, an oasis of greenery
enshrines the Measach Falls of Corriehalloch, a stream
tumbling through a deep-bitten chasm, which some have
pronounced the grandest Highland scene in the genre of
that Black Rock ravine mentioned below. If we are ever
to reach John o' Groat's House let us turn away from the
transparent waters of this coast and from the gloomy
glories of Skye. The sportsmen to whom these northern
wilds are best known would not thank any guide of idle
tourists, and such a guide must be pitied in his task of
repeating epithets.
From Dingwali the railway holds up the side of the
Cromarty Firth by a country of Munroes and Mackenzies,
who have taken all the world for their province. A
163
Bonnie Scotland
notable natural feature here is the chasm of the Black
Rock, through which a stream from Loch Glass leaps in
a series of cascades gouging out an open tunnel that
sometimes is only a few yards wide at the top, whence one
looks down upon waters foaming into gloomy linns, an
American canon in miniature, its edges bristling like the
Trossachs, its mouth thus described by Hugh Miller : —
" The river — after wailing for miles in a pent-up channel, narrow
as one of the lanes of old Edinburgh, and hemmed in by walls
quite as perpendicular, and nearly twice as lofty — suddenly expands,
first into a deep, brown pool, and then into a broad, tumbling
stream, that, as if permanently affected in temper by the strict
severity of the discipline to which its early life had been subjected,
frets and chafes in all its after course, till it loses itself in the sea.
The banks, ere we reach the opening of the chasm, have become
steep and wild and densely wooded, and there stand out on either
hand giant crags, that plant their iron feet in the stream ; here
girdled with belts of rank, succulent herbs, that love the damp
shade and the frequent drizzle of the spray j and there, hollow and
bare, with their round pebbles sticking out from the partially
decomposed surface, like the piled-up skulls in the great under-
ground cemetery of the Parisians. . . . And over the sullen pool
in front we may see the stern pillars of the portal rising from
eighty to a hundred feet in height, and scarce twelve feet apart,
like the massive obelisks of some Egyptian temple ; while in
gloomy vista within, projection starts out beyond projection, like
column beyond column in some narrow avenue of approach to
Luxor or Carnac. The precipices are green, with some moss or
byssus, that, like the miner, chooses a subterranean habitat — for
here the rays of the sun never fall ; the dead mossy water beneath,
from which the cliffs rise so abruptly, bears the hue of molten
pitch ; the trees, fast anchored in the rock, shoot out their
branches across the opening, to form a thick tangled roof, at
the height of a hundred and fifty feet overhead ; while from the
164
To John o' Groat's House
recesses within, where the eye fails to penetrate, there issues a com-
bination of the strangest and wildest sounds ever yet produced by
water : there is the deafening rush of the torrent, blent as if with
the clang of hammers, the roar of vast bellows, and the confused
gabble of a thousand voices."
Turning away from the sea, the line soon strikes it
again at the ancient borough of Tain, on the Dornoch
Firth. Near the head of the inlet we cross into Suther-
land, and soon by the gorge of the Shin come to Lairg,
port of the mail-cars that cruise into far corners of this
county. The southern land, whose name tells how it was
once counted part of nakeder Caithness, has truly northern
features of mountains and open moors, lakes, " waters,"
" straths," and the " kyles " of its coast, those deep narrow
sounds taking their Gaelic name from the same root as
Calais. Three of its five sides are washed by the sea. The
interior is chiefly given up to deer and sheep, with here
and there an oasis of moorland farm, rescued from the
heather as Holland from salt water, and only by ceaseless
industry held against Nature's encroachments. Too much
of the land, indeed, makes " a wilderness of brown and
ragged moorland," whose c< monotonous features " are
"masses of wet rock and dark russet heather, black
swamps, low and bare hills, and now and again the grey
glimmer of a stream or tarn " among heights " dulled with
hurrying showers and glittering out again to the sun."
The fish of its inland waters is one of Sutherland's
richest harvests. Its lakes are legion ; one large parish
alone is said to contain hundreds of sheets ; and the
coming and going of anglers keeps up the good roads and
fair inns of a thinly-populated region, from which have
Bonnie Scotland
been swept away the traces of homes made desolate by the
"Sutherland evictions." Loch Shin, running half across
the county from Lairg, is the longest lake, about which
man has waged feeble war with the sternness of Nature ;
but the wildest scene is Loch Assynt, near the west coast,
tapering among a group of grand mountains such as the
Sutherlandshire Ben More and the three-peaked mass of
Quinaig. This remote nook seems neglected by authors,
yet a picturesque novelist might here find material for a
second Legend of Montrosey whose last adventure brought
him to be captured by Macleod of Assynt and confined in
the Castle of Ardvreck. As for the features of the west
coast, behind which rise so wildly weather-worn crags
above glacier-planed glens and fiords, like those of Norway
on a smaller scale, they are thus summed up by Mr. John
Sinclair in his Scenes and Stories of the North of Scotland: —
" The Gaelic word c Assynt ' is a compound and signifies c out
and in.' If so, like almost all place-names in the Highlands, it
is most fitting and felicitous. Indeed it applies admirably, not
only to the district so called, but to the entire west coast of
Sutherland from the borders of Ross-shire to Cape Wrath itself.
Looking, for instance, at the map, we can still see in the endless
contortions of the shore, as we used to do when children, the
figures and profiles of men and beasts — not one of them in any
degree like to any other. There are brows flat and high on the
headlands ; eyes large and small in the lochs and tarns ; noses
Roman, Grecian, retrousse, on the rocky capes ; bay-mouths wide
and narrow, open and shut, drooping in sadness, curving upward
in joy j chins which are impudent, and chins which are retiring ;
cheeks smooth and furrowed, shaven and bearded ; and in all these
you can clearly see, if you have any discernment at all, grumpy
grandfathers and grinning fools, laughing children and scolding
1 66
THE ISLES OF LOCH MAREE, ROSS-SHIRE
To John o' Groat's House
dominies, gaping crocodiles and snarling monkeys, weeping maids
and wistful lovers. The surface of the country inland from the
shore is extremely varied, rugged, and wild, but full of interest
and charm for healthy and buoyant natures. If you believe, as I
for one do, that in order to see the beauties and taste the sweets
of land and water there is needed not only sight but insight, which
is something far more and better, you will find at every turn of
the highway new matter of surprise and admiration. Island-
studded bays like Badcall, picturesque retreats like Scourie; deeply
indented lochs like Laxford, the * Fiord of salmon ' ; distant
views of a mountain-chain of peaks ; long successions of rocky
knolls crowned with brushwood and heather — these are a few of
the elements which go to make up the panorama between Assynt
and the Kyle of Durness. When at length you look down over
the brindled cliffs of Cape Wrath ; when you behold its rugged
masses of God-made masonry ; when you hear the thunder-throb
of the waves in its vaulted caverns ; when you gaze to south and
west and north over the hungry heaving sea, you can but look
and marvel and adore."
The north coast, with its Cave of Smoo and its Kyles
of Durness and of Tongue, is also grandly broken. The
east shore, along which the railway runs to Helmsdale,
is rather a strip of fields and woods. In the south-
east corner lies Dornoch, which enjoys the distinction of
being the smallest county town in the kingdom, literally
a village, with a restored Cathedral as proof of city dignity,
and on the site of its Episcopal palace a prison that has
been closed for want of custom among the honest High-
landers. There has been little crime here since the last
witch was burned on British soil in 1722 at Dornoch.
What brings strangers to Dornoch, now that it has a
railway branch, is its golf-links, extending for thousands
Bonnie Scotland
of acres on the seashore ; and this far-northern under-
study of St. Andrews offers a remarkably good autumn
climate, often mild up till Christmas. Not much bigger
is Golspie, with its sea-girt pile of Dunrobin, seat of the
ducal family that, owning most of Sutherland, and having
incorporated the title and estate of Cromarty as well as
the English peerages of Stafford and Gower, can hold up
its head as the largest landowner in Britain. With a
thousand or so people of its own, Golspie has a good
hotel, from which strangers may visit the Dunrobin Glen
and waterfall, the traces of gold-working that once
promised to pay in this neighbourhood, and Ben Bhraggie
conspicuously crowned by Chan trey's statue of the first
Duke of Sutherland.
Above Helmsdale, the Ord ridge makes the Caithness
frontier, round the end of which winds what is literally
a highroad into our northernmost county, described by
Pennant as more terrible than the Penmaenmawr track
that used to be the bugbear of travellers to Ireland. The
road has been improved, but the railway is here forced
away from the sea, seeking an entry into Caithness farther
inland. The southern part of this county is still High-
land, where the train runs on miles and miles over
unbroken stretches of heather ; then farther north these
fall away into a windy expanse of hollows and ridges, in
which Nature would seem to have come short of material
for ending off our island with picturesque effect ; the
central part has even been called the most forlorn wilderness
in Britain. Caithness, like other countrysides, has been
" improved " in our time ; but still it shows wide, cheerless
prospects of bog and waste, with peat stacks more frequent
1 68
To John o' Groat's House
than trees, and scattered, turf-walled houses having their
thatch bound on by straw ropes and weighted down by
stones to keep them from being blown away. Verses
signed by the well-known initials, " J. S. B.," set in a
frame of honour at John o1 Groat's House, describe the
bareness and bleakness of these poor fields, fenced by
Flagstones and slates in a row
Where hedges are frightened to grow ;
and
Shrubs in the flap of the breeze,
Sweating to make themselves trees.
The most flourishing production of Caithness appears
to be the flagstones, layers of mud and fish bones pressed
together ages ago, which its quarries send forth to pave
more genial regions. Its waters, too, grow a valuable
crop, as one may know who has ever seen the multitudin-
ous herring-fishing fleet set sail from Wick in the long
summer twilight. Angling can be had in a chain of some
dozen lochs drained by the Thurso river that runs through
the county from south to north, at the mouth of which
over 2500 salmon were once netted in one haul. In the
south, if heather were edible, the folk should be fat ; and
below darkly naked cones, we find glens such as Berrie-
dale, in parts rich as well as romantic, like a miniature
Switzerland of which Morven is the Matterhorn.
Here again we have a duodecimo edition of Highlands
and Lowlands bound together. In the north-east the
people are tall and sturdy, with plain marks of Scandinavian
origin, like their sfers and dales. On the south and west
rather, we find clans bearing such names as Mackay,
Sutherland, Keith, and Gunn, the last certainly a Norse
169 22
Bonnie Scotland
tribe who can wear only an adopted tartan. Most illus-
trious of all were the Sinclairs, that held the now dwindled
Earldom of Caithness, one of those Norman families
settling themselves so masterfully all over Scotland.
From this farthest point of the kingdom, hundreds of
them followed their Earl to Flodden, and hardly one came
back to tell the tale of that " Black Monday," since when,
it is said, no Sinclair will cross the Ord ridge on a Monday.
Another sore loss fell on the clan a century later, when a
certain Colonel Sinclair, heedless of what foreign enlist-
ment regulations had then taken shape, led a regiment
of his clan to serve Gustavus Adolphus against Norway,
but, attacked by Norwegian peasants in a narrow gorge,
more than half of them were crushed beneath rocks hurled
down from above, as the French soldiers in Tyrol, or the
Turks in defiles of the Kurdish Dersim. The monument
on the spot records the death of fourteen hundred kindly
Scots, which appears an exaggeration ; but it is said that
not a score escaped with their lives. Many other grim
and gory tales might be told of this race, as some are in
Mr. John Sinclair's book above mentioned. The shells of
castles fringing these shores have as often as not had a
Sinclair lord at one period or other, like Castle Sinclair,
almost crumbled away, while the older Girnigo, on to
which it was built, still stoutly defies the weather. To-
day the most outstanding branch of the family is that of
Thurso, first distinguished in a new field by Sir John
Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, and by his im-
provements in the county ; then by the author of Holi-
day House, and by more than one dignitary of the English
Church. This family is notable for stature as well as
170
MOOR AND MOUNTAIN,
ROSS-SHIRE
To John o' Groat's House
wisdom. I forget whether it was Catherine Sinclair's
father or brother who was said to have three dozen feet
of daughters ; and when he put down a new pavement —
probably from his own quarries — opposite his house in
Edinburgh, it was readily nicknamed the " Giant's Cause-
way." The main branch of the Sinclairs, whose titles at
one time, says Sir Walter, might have wearied a herald
when they were not so rich as many an English yeoman,
is represented near Edinburgh by the ruins of Rosslyn
Castle and the monuments of that beautiful chapel —
Where Rosslyn's chiefs uncoffined lie
Each baron for a sable shroud
Sheathed in his iron panoply.
The railway, forking for the only Caithness towns, Wick
and Thurso, with their ports Pulteneytown and Scrabster,
does not give a fair view of the county. Its most impres-
sive features, as at our other Land's End, are to be looked
for in its rim of brown cliffs, tight-packed layers of flag-
stones, their faces " etched out in alternate lines of cornice
and frieze," here dappled by hardy vegetation, there alive
with clamorous sea-fowl. Like the granite, slate, and
serpentine edges of Cornwall, these sandstone rocks have
been carved by wind and water into boldest shapes of
capes and bays, dark caverns, funnels, overhanging shelves
and gables, swirling " pots " and foaming reefs, isolated
stacks lashed by every tide, broken teeth bored and filled
by every storm, and the deep chasms here called geos, that
sometimes lead down to beaches rich in fine and rare shells,
for one, " John o' Groat's Buckie," akin to the cowries of
the tropics. In the damp crevices, also, grow rare herbs
such as that "Holy Grass" found by Robert Dick of
171
Bonnie Scotland
Thurso, one of Mr. Smiles's " discoveries " in the species
of self-helped naturalists. More truly than of Cornwall,
it may be said that Caithness seldom grows wood enough
to make a coffin. Where Cornwall comes short of Caith-
ness is in the numerous castles, not all of them left to
decay, that on the verge of those northern precipices
might often be confounded with Nature's own ruins. It
was only about the beginning of the eighteenth century
that such strongholds could be deserted for snugger
mansions. Here, in 1680, was the scene of our last
private war, when the head of the Breadalbane Campbells
invaded Caithness with a small army, that overcame the
Sinclairs, it is said, by the wily stratagem of causing to be
stranded on their coast a ship freighted with whisky to
drown the enemy's prudence and resolution.
Traces of older inhabitants are very frequent in
Caithness, its moors thickly strewn with hut circles,
standing stones, tumuli, and those curious underground
excavations known as "Picts' Houses," which appear to
have been dwellings rather than burial-places. One usual
feature of such burrows is the cells and passages fitting a
smaller race than our noble selves, who must crawl on
hands and knees in grimy explorations not likely to be
undertaken by the general tourist. Hence there is reason
to suppose that Scotland and other countries have been
inhabited by a stunted race of aborigines, like the dwarfish
Ainos of Yesso or the pygmies who turn up in various
parts of Africa. Mr. David MacRitchie, an antiquary
who has paid special attention to so-called Pictish remains,
is doughty champion of a theory which connects the
dimly historic Picts or Pechts and the legendary Fians
172
To John o' Groat's House
with the whole fabulous family of fairies, elves, goblins,
brownies, pixies, trolls, or what not, who are represented
as dwarfish and subterranean, issuing forth from their
retreats to hold varied relations of service or mischief
with ordinary men. The name of the Fians, belonging to
Ireland as well as to the Scottish Highlands, and fitly
represented in the dark doings of Fenians, may point to
Finland, where small Laplanders still exist in flesh and
blood. The " good people," who long haunted Highland
and Lowland glens, — but it seems they cannot abide the
scratching of steel pens or the squeaking of slate pencils, —
were apt to be tiny, of retiring habits, and in the way of
disappearing underground. So the fairies may have been
real enough, for all the scorn of that " self-styled science
of the so-called nineteenth century." Scott, who seems
well disposed to the theory, tells us of stunted, servile
clans, such as the M'Couls, who were hereditary Gibeonites
to the Stewarts of Appin. In our own time Hebridean
herds have been found encamped inside beehive hillocks
of turf such as opened to take in the captives of fairy
adventure. As for the objection that such beings some-
times appeared as giants rather than dwarfs, it will be
remembered how a similar transformation came quite
easy to Alice in Wonderland, how omne ignotum pro
magnifico is very apt to hold true in a misty climate, and
how visions of the spiritual in this country have often had
an origin disturbing to the senses —
Wi' tippenny we'll fear nae evil,
Wi' usquebaugh we'll face the devil.
But neither Mr. MacRitchie, in his Fians, Fairies^
Bonnie Scotland
and Picts and other writings, nor any of his brother
ethnologists, has much to tell us about John o' Groat,
whose house is the shrine of so many cyclists, wheeling
piously from the Land's End, a road of more than nine
hundred miles at the shortest, through hundreds of
villages, scores of towns, and dozens of cities or places of
fame. All that way they come to see a low grassy mound
and a flagstaff in front of an hotel, a mile or two west
from the pointed stacks of Duncansbay Head. The
story goes that this John was a Dutchman by descent,
whose family, split into eight branches, kept up meeting
for an annual feast ; then to avoid squabblings for pre-
cedence, John hit on the idea of an octagonal table in an
eight-sided house, with eight doors and eight windows, in
which, let us trust, his kinsmen were not at sixes and
sevens. Here we may have some hint of such a contest
for chieftainship as is not unknown among Highland
clans, else the folk-lorists must find this a hard text to
expound. Three, seven, and nine are all mystic numbers ;
five is time-honoured in the East, as four in the Western
world ; two and ten have a practical importance ; six
bears with it a sense of satisfaction, as do a dozen or a
score ; thirteen and fourteen fit themselves to legend
and superstition ; even four-and-twenty blackbirds have
been sagely interpreted as the hours of the day and
night ; but what can one say of eight in tale or history ?
It might take a mathematician to make a myth here.
Maybe the points of the compass, doubled for the sake
of emphasis, are at the bottom of it. Perhaps there is
some political allusion to James VI.'s Octavian board of
administrators. Or may some printer, short of copy, not
CRAGS NEAR POOLEWE, ROSS-SHIRE
To John o' Groat's House
have tried his hand at composing an octavo legend? Possibly
the story is more or less true, in which the Scotticised
Dutchman is further stated to have flourished as owner of
a ferry to the Orkneys. The suggestion that his fare
was a groat must give way before the fact of Groat being
apparently a real Dutch name. Nor is it " past dispute "
that here geese are bred from barnacles, as asserted by
sundry authors, among them that tourist of Cromwell's
time, Richard Franck, who seems to have made his way so
far, and gives us much quaint information about divinity,
scenery, and fishing, spoilt by a most affected style, by
slap-dash spelling of names, and by an evident " scunner "
at his model Izaak Walton.
One thing seems certain, that John o' Groat was a
humbug if he gave out this non-existent house of his for
the northernmost point of our mainland, as stiff-kneed
cyclists fondly reckon. That honour properly belongs to
Dunnet Head, the lofty line of red cliffs stretching to the
east of Thurso Bay, hollowed out by billows that shake
the lighthouse on the farthest point, from which one
looks to the Orkneys over the " still vexed " Pentland
Firth. I wonder if that modern John o' Groat be still to
the fore, who some twenty years ago was presented with a
testimonial for his constancy in carrying across the mail
during the lifetime of a generation. He belonged to a
school of ancient mariners who had the knack of smelling
their way about the sea, whereas our modern Nelsons, it
seems, don't know where they are till they have gone
down into their cabin and worked out a sum. I once
crossed with this " skeely skipper," and was much struck
by his method of navigation. A thick fog came on half-
Bonnie Scotland
way across a tide that races at ten miles an hour ; then to
clear his inner light, he had up a glass of grog, through
which he took frequent observations. Every now and
again he stopped the engines and bawled out into the fog
without any response ; but when at last a muffled hail came
back, we were within a hundred yards of Scrabster Pier.
On another occasion, he is said to have hit it off still more
closely, carrying away the pier-head as a proof of his
straight-steered course.
But here we must turn back, lest a darkless summer
day tempt us to cross to Orkney, and on to the much-
battered Shetlands by the stepping-stone of the Fair
Isle, whose name, like that of the foreign FarOe Isles,
denotes not beauty but sheep. This muggy and windy
archipelago, indeed, is hardly Scottish ground, but an
ex-Danish possession, held in pledge by us for a princess's
dowry that seems like to be paid on the Greek Calends.
Its people indignantly decline to be called Scotchmen.
And though our Thule has grand and fine features of its
own, too often wrapped in fog, they are hardly such as
go to make up the character of Bonnie Scotland.
CHAPTER IX
THE GREAT GLEN
THE Highland Line is an oblique one, in the main facing
south-east ; and in much the same direction, between the
head of deep inlets, extends the cleft of some threescore
miles that cuts the Highlands into near and off halves, the
former far the harder worked as a tourist ground, the
latter retaining more of its Celtic poverty, while not less
richly endowed by nature. From either side smaller glens
and straths, each the "country" of some clan, debouch
into Glenmore, bed of a chain of lochs and streams linked
together as the Caledonian Canal, their varying levels made
navigable by the locks that come easier to a Sassenach
tongue. This canal is now nearly a century old. In the
century before its trenches were opened, King George's
soldiers had islanded the farther Highlands by a road
between three fortified posts, in the centre and at either
end of this Great Glen, thus used as a base for dominating
and civilising a region over which the fiery cross ran more
freely than the king's writ. The northernmost of the
three, Fort-George, above Inverness, is still a military
station, serving as depot for the Seaforth and Cameron
Highlanders.
177 23
Bonnie Scotland
Inverness is called the capital of the Highlands, though
it lies on an edge of Celtic Scotland, at the north end of
the Great Glen, and near the head of the Moray Firth.
This is not a Gaelic city, whose inhabitants had at one
time the fame of speaking the best English in Scotland, or,
for the matter of that, in England, a merit sometimes
traced back to a colony of Cromwell's soldiers. Of late
years, to tell the truth, the speech of Inverness has hardened
and vulgarised somewhat in the mouths of a very mixed
population ; yet still in some of the secluded glens of the
county may be heard a tongue not their own used with
a melodious refinement unknown within the sound of
Bow Bells.
Smart, cheerful, and regularly built, Inverness has the
air of a lowland town, spread out on a river plain, across
which fragments of the Highlands have drifted from the
grand mountains in view, as the Alps from Berne. The
Ness has the distinction of being the shortest river in
Britain, shorter even than London's New River ; but its
course of only a few miles, from Loch Ness to the Moray
Firth's inner recess, is enough to make it a resort for big
salmon and small shipping. Hector Boece records a
former great " plenty and take of herring," which vanished
"for offence made against some Saint." Sheltered from
the winds of the east and the " weather " of the west, the
district has a genial climate where, indeed, the air often
" nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle
senses." Shakespeare, not having the advantage of Black's
Guide, says little about the scenery around, which has been
much described in Wild Eelin, William Black's last and
not his worst novel, though it has the deplorable fault of
INVERNESS FROM NEAR THE ISLANDS
The Great Glen
bringing in real personages not less thinly disguised than
Inverness is as Invernish.
The famous Castle still stands by the river-side, in its
modern form serving as a court-house and prison for
ungracious Duncans made both drunk and bold ; while
the grounds of its " pleasant seat " are a lounge for honest
inhabitants, kept in memory, by a statue of Flora
Macdonald, how Prince Charles Edward's men blew up
the old blood-stained walls. Opposite, across the river,
is the modern Cathedral of the Episcopal Church, here
a considerable body which once had a soul of Jacobite
sentiment. Inverness shows several fragments of antiquity,
most revered of them that palladium Clach-na-Cudain —
" stone of the tubs," now built into the base of the restored
Town Cross. A little way up the river its " Islands "
have been adapted as a unique " combination of public
park and natural wilderness, of clear brown swirls and
eddies under the overhanging hazels and alders, and open
and foaming white cataracts where artificial barriers divert
the broad rush of the river." This beauty-spot of wood
and water no stranger should fail to seek out ; then not
far beyond he may gain Tom-na-hurich, "hill of the
fairies," which makes a picturesque cemetery, commanding
what a pre-Wordsworthian writer describes as " a boundless
view of gentlemen's seats, seated generally under the
shelter of eminences, and surrounded by wooded planta-
tions." Another fine prospect can be had a mile or so
behind the station from the heights called "Hut of Health,"
on which have been built extensive barracks.
The hotels of Inverness are not too many to accom-
modate the crowds that flit through it in the tourist and
179
Bonnie Scotland
shooting season. It has two annual galas, when accom-
modation may be hardest to find for love or money.
The first is the " Character Fair " in July, so called because
then some half a million changes hands over dealings in
wool on the security of the dealer's character, not a fleece
being brought to market, nor even a sample, unless of
human brawn and beards well displayed in the brightest of
tartan and the roughest of homespun. The second is the
Northern Meeting in September, gayest and smartest of
those gatherings by which the old Highland games, dress,
and music are kept up. But ah ! this touch of local colour
is too like the artificial bloom on a faded cheek. The
glow of tartans here revived by what a German might call
" Sunday Highlanders," is but a Vanity Fair. The stalwart
athletes, some of them "professionals," who exert them-
selves to make a London holiday, have little more of
Arcadian simplicity than the fine folk who look on. The
clansmen forget old feuds ; the chiefs no longer command
the old loyalty ; the greyness and greed of our practical
world are settling down over the Highlands, conquered
by gold, as hardly by southron steel.
If the pensive tourist seek a purer vision of the past,
let him go out to the lonely station of Culloden Moor,
some half a dozen miles from Inverness. From the great
viaduct that here typifies modern enterprise, he may hold
up the Nairn to the roughly overgrown field on which
are half buried those pre-historic stones of Clava, monu-
ments of a past beyond Scott's ken. Then, crossing the
river and mounting the heights, he comes on the common-
place road that will lead him over Drumossie, where the
romantic cause fell hopelessly when Cumberland's red-coats
1 80
The Great Glen
mowed down and bayoneted its jealous, sullen, and weary
champions, more than a tenth of them dying here for the
Prince who, according to one story, fled basely, but others
report him as forced from the field. Fir plantations and
fields have now clad the wild nakedness of this tableland ;
but by the roadside are seen the mounds beneath which lie
each clan together, still shoulder to shoulder, and the
monumental cairn that is yearly hung with votive wreaths
by a certain perfervid Jacobite. If these men gave way
before disciplined valour and artillery, if their own martial
spirit was marred by quarrelsome ill- temper, let us re-
member how many of them joined or rejoined the cause
when it was as good as lost, after the Jacobite squires of
the south had held back from its first flush of success.
The next time the Cockney be moved to his sneer about
bawbees, let him consider how neither bribes, nor threats,
nor torture could tempt these poor Highlanders to
betray their prince in his desperate wanderings with a price
set on his head. And let us all forget, if we can, the
cruelty with which the victors followed up that last rout
of sentimental devotion. One poor fellow took hundreds
of lashes on an English ship of war, without opening his
mouth to confess how he had ferried the fugitive to a
safer isle. Such stories of humble fidelity are too much
forgotten by historians who bear in mind how the heads
of certain houses — father and son — ranked themselves
on opposite sides with a politic eye to escape forfeiture,
whether James or George were king. The most romantic
case, if true, is that of the Macintosh in the royal ranks,
said to have yielded himself prisoner to his own wife, who
had taken his place at the head of the rebellious clansmen.
181
Bonnie Scotland
Another family manoeuvre turned out luckily for a Low-
land peer who, as preparation for taking the field with the
Pretender, treated himself to a foot-bath which his prudent
wife made so hot that her valorous spouse could not boot
nor spur for many a day, and thus was kept out of political
hot water. The same story, indeed, is told of another
couple, whose sympathies were divided the opposite way on.
Where are the sons of the scattered clans ? Many of
them peacefully settled among law-abiding Lowlanders,
many of them gone to America, where among other
mountains, on fruitfuller straths and by mightier streams,
they often cherish their Gaelic and their kilts, sometimes
against sore pricks of climate and mosquitoes, sharper
than the ancestral itch of dirt and poverty. In one dis-
trict of Nova Scotia alone, there are said to thrive three
thousand of those Macdonalds whose offended pride hung
back from the clash of Culloden. Before the '45, emigra-
tion to America had already begun with the colony settled
in Georgia by General Oglethorpe ; even earlier indeed
hardy Highlanders and Orkneymen were in demand for
service in the wilds of Hudson's Bay ; but after Culloden
the exodus became considerable, increasing as the chieftains,
turned into lairds, found idle and prejudiced dependants
only in the way of improving their estates ; and " another
for Hector ! " came to mean a fresh clansman shipped
across the Atlantic to see Lochaber no more. Harsh as
it was, the wrench proved often a blessing in disguise,
when the last look at those misty Hebrides had softened
into a tender memory with the farmers of New Glengarrv
or ice-bound Antigonish. Our day saw two Prime
Ministers of Canada who, if kept at home, might have
182
TOMDOUN, GLEN GARRY, INVERNESS-SHIRE
The Great Glen
been carrying the southron's game-bag, as one of them
perhaps did in his bare-legged youth.
Perhaps the most remarkable Highland-American has
never been duly brought into the light of history, as
neither has that mysterious soldier of fortune Gregor
MacGregor, " Cacique of Poyais," who made such a stir
in two worlds, but is now hardly remembered unless by
the mention of him in the Ingot dsby Legends, and the
banknotes of his bankrupt kingdom, treasured by col-
lectors of curiosities. Did the general reader ever hear of
Alexander MacGillivray, who was born at once a High-
land gentleman and a Red Indian chief? His career,
which I hope to write some day, if once able to bridge
over certain gaps in my information, makes an extra-
ordinary mixture of romance with very opposite features,
better fitting the vulgar idea of a Scot.
Some time during the Jacobite disturbances, one
Lachlan MacGillivray emigrated from Inverness to the
Southern States, where he became a prosperous Indian
trader, and, perhaps in the way of business, married a
" princess " of the great Creek Confederacy. Alexander,
the son of this mesalliance, was well educated and brought
up to trade, but early in life betook himself to his
mother's people, among whom his attainments as well as
his birth gave him influence. Rank, by Indian law, as by
" Lycian custom," being inherited on the spindle side,
before he was thirty he had been recognised as chief of
the Creeks, and for many years played a leading part in
their fitful politics. Little is known of his rule beyond
the main facts, our clearest accounts of him being derived
from a rare book written by another young adventurer,
183
Bonnie Scotland
the Frenchman Leclerc Milfort, whose story, in plain
English, seems not to be always trusted.
According to himself, Milfort, having also wandered
among the Creeks, was chosen by them as their war chief,
an office separate from the civil headship of an Indian
tribe. Then the Scotsman and the Frenchman appear to
have governed the Creeks for years, making a congenial
disposition of power, the one the head, the other the hand,
of a powerful though somewhat unstable body politic.
MacGillivray had no stomach for fighting, was even a
coward, if Milfort is to be believed ; but he was crafty,
resourceful, and of a clear Caledonian eye to the main
chance. Milfort found him living in a good house, with
herds of cattle and dozens of negro slaves. Another
source of profit he had in a secret partnership with a firm
of brother Scots at Pensacola, to which he directed the
trade of the Creek nation, jealously intrigued for by their
British and Spanish neighbours. The Revolutionary War
had nearly caused a rupture between these Creek consuls.
MacGillivray's sympathies were with the British ; Milfort
had no scruple in fighting against the Americans, but
when French troops came to take part in the struggle, he
was disposed to side with his compatriots. His colleague,
however, persuaded him to remain neutral ; and by this
Scotsman's influence, the Creeks seem to have been kept
from throwing into the scale the weight of their war
parties. The canny chief entered into a maze of tricky
negotiations with the various bordering Powers, pretend-
ing to each to be in its special interest, receiving bribes
from all, throughout, as far as his dealings can be traced,
" true to one party, and that is himself."
The Great Glen
The States having secured their independence, the
eagerness of American settlers to press over the Creek
bounds had almost brought about an Indian war with the
great republic. Scenes of bloodshed took place on the
frontier ; and if MacGillivray was cunning and not
warlike, he showed the civilised virtue of humanity in
sparing and rescuing captives. Peace was negotiated by an
Indian deputation which he led to New York. A secret
article provided for his being appointed a general in the
U.S. service, with a pension of $1200. At the same time,
or soon afterwards, the wily chief accepted similar dis-
tinctions and payments from the British and the Spanish
Governments, and between them he must have enjoyed
a considerable income for steadily promoting his own
interests, while impartially betraying all his rival employers
in turn.
But the arrangement which he brought about with
young Uncle Sam roused the Indians against him. A
rebel leader appeared in one "General" Bowles, who,
originally a private soldier, in the course of many dubious
adventures more than once played the pretender among
the Creeks. A civil war raged in the Confederacy ;
MacGillivray at one time was driven to flight ; but, still
backed up by Milfort, he succeeded in partly restoring
his power, though not with the same firmness. In the
middle of his tortuous policies, he died at the age of fifty,
leaving a son, who was sent home to Scotland, where old
Lachlan is said to have been still alive in Inverness-shire.
It was his half-breed nephew, William Weatherford, who,
later on, led the last struggle of the Creeks against
American encroachment.
185 24
Bonnie Scotland
As for Leclerc Milfort, he was left for a time struggling
against Bowles and other rivals for authority. According
to his own story, the French Revolution brought him back
to France, where he laboured to persuade Buonaparte how
easily an empire might be won in America. It is said that
the First Consul was taken by the idea, and that in 1801
a small French expedition had even been prepared to
conquer the Creek country under Milfort's guidance.
But vaster plans interfered with any such scheme, and in
1803, Louisiana and the great South- West were sold by
France to the United States. The ex-chief had a chance
to gratify his taste for fighting at home, when France was
invaded in 1814; but he did not return to resume the
authority of which he boasts in his book, so rare that I
have never seen a copy except my own. If one only had
all the truth about these two white adventurers, what a
strange romance it would make !
The Highlands may be all the more prosperous for the
new husbandry that drove so many of their sons to seek
fortune in distant lands, often to find fame. It might be
well for the people to have such enterprise roughly forced
on a conservative spirit which scowled at the introduction
of potatoes, turnips, and other improvements to their
backward culture. What their good old days were in
truth may be guessed in the smoky huts where they still
love to pig together, stubbornly refusing to adapt them-
selves to an order in which sheep are found more profitable
than men, and deer than sheep. The big sheep-farmer
from the south makes more of the land than the easy-going
crofter ; yet the smallest drop of Celtic blood cannot but
stir to see a clansman touching his hat for tips from
1 86
A SHEPHERD'S COT IN GLEN NEVIS,
INVERNESS-SHIRE
The Great Glen
southron stockbrokers, and serving as obsequious attendant
to the American millionaires who enclose his native heath.
Naturally the Highlander is a gentleman, for all his faults,
with instinctive courtesy to soften his somewhat sullen
pride. More than once I have had a tip refused by a
Highland servant, as nowhere else in the world unless in
the United States before their social independence, too,
began to be demoralised by the largesses of successful
speculators, who, after piling up dollars by " rings " and
"corners," find they can buy less observance for their
money at home than by corrupting a race declared by
Mrs. Grant of Laggan, herself reared in America, " to
resemble the French in being poor with a better grace than
other people."
The Highlander was a born sportsman as well as a
gentleman, who by his paternal chiefs would not be called
closely to account for every deer and salmon that went to
eke out his frugal fare. Now he can shoot or fish only
in the way of business, the very laird making two ends
meet by letting out his moors and streams to a stranger,
in whose service the sons of warriors play the gamekeeper
and gillie, with more or less good will, loading the gun
and carrying the well-stocked luncheon basket, perhaps
not always very hearty in hunting down those Ishmaelite
brethren who do a little grouse-netting on their own account
for the supply of London tables by the I2th of August.
Sometimes the Gael takes revenge by being able to hint
his scorn for the sportsmanship of these new masters ; but
as often, to do them justice, they will not give him this
poor satisfaction. A well-known southron humorist tells
a story which needs his voice to bring out the point, how
Bonnie Scotland
he missed a deer, to the disgust of the keeper, and how,
trying to conciliate this worthy by admiration of a fine
head, he got the dry answer — " It's no near so fine as the
one ye shot this morning — a-a-at ! "
Deer-stalking is a sport that still demands manly skill
and hardihood, however many menials can be hired to mark
down and circumvent the great game. So much cannot
always be said of other shooting, when the noble sportsman
entrenches himself behind fortifications to which the fierce
wild fowl are driven to be shot down by gun after gun
placed in his hands. Sport, that was once a bond between
classes, becomes more and more a monopoly of the rich.
The very meaning of the word suffers a change in our day
from the doing of something oneself to a performance
where most of the activity is by paid assistants or " profes-
sionals." One good feature of Highland sport is in not
lending itself to the collection of gate-money from a mob
of lookers-on ; but the dollar-hunting and £0/#>-landing
chieftain need not expect to be loved by those whom he
would fain bar out of his solitary playground.
I, too, have lived in Arcadia, and was duly entered at
this craft, not that I ever took very heartily to it, or that
a big capercailzie, then a rara avis in Highland woods, ran
much more risk from me than from Mr. Winkle. But I
know the free joy of tramping over wet moors behind
dogs, shooting for sport and not for slaughter, lunching ofiF
bread and cheese, or a cold grouse, with fingers for forks,
and coming home to a dinner won by one's own hands.
That old-fashioned muzzle -loading work is scorned by
the present generation who, indeed, pay such rents for moors
and coverts that they have some reason to be keen after a
188
The Great Glen
big bag. Well I remember a true Nimrod's scorn for the
first great noble in our part of the world who sold his game !
We children in the nursery would be fed on grouse and
salmon to use up what could not be sent away as presents ;
and, for my part, I have never quite got over a stickjaw
conception of these expensive dainties.
There was a Highland shooting which in those days
seemed a paradise of schoolboy holiday. It belonged to a
well-known Scottish peeress married to a French nobleman,
on whom it was thrown away, though their son grew to be
of a different mind. Thus it came on a long lease into
the occupation of keen sportsmen of my family, who
naturally did not care to build for their inevitable successors.
The " lodge " was a short row of white cottages, the centre
one turned into a parlour, the others into bedrooms ; and as
youngsters grew up, extra accommodations were provided
in the shape of a tent and iron shanties, the whole group
backed by a thin clump of wind-blown firs visible some
dozen miles away on the bare mountain side. All through
the summer months it made an encampment for a band of
kilted youngsters, " hardy, bold, and wild," taking in the
Highland air at every pore, with miles of moor and burn
for their playground, which they knew not to be haunted
by the victims of Druid rites. Not that more sophisticated
guests were unknown at this eyry of eyases. The great
little Earl Russell, at that time, if I am not mistaken, Prime
Minister, was tenant of a neighbouring moor. One day
he had come over for a sociable beat, broken in on by a
messenger, hot foot across the heather, bearing a huge
official envelope superscribed with the name of a ducal
colleague. The statesman requested a private apartment
189
Bonnie Scotland
in which to examine this communication, but the only
closet available was a bedroom, where he opened the cover
to find — a caricature of himself from Punch \
I have been led away by a grumble at the self-indulgent
and well-appointed sportsmen who in this generation
invade my native heath. But, however much they make
themselves at home here, we chuckle to think that they at
least cannot tune their ears to the native music. For
what says the poet —
A Sassenach chief may be bonnily built,
He may purchase a sporran, a bonnet, and kilt ;
Stick a skean in his hose — wear an acre of stripes —
But he cannot assume an affection for pipes.
Another comfort taken by the dispossessed son of the
mist is in hearing the weather abused by strangers, who
may as well stay at home under shelter of their Twopenny
Tubes and Burlington Arcades if they are afraid of rain.
Dr. Johnson was not, and a gentler critic of his time
observed that the Highlanders minded snow " no more
than hair powder." In the warm south of England, I
once caught a cold which stuck to me all summer and
seemed like to settle on my lungs. Late in autumn, in a
kill or cure mood, I went down to the dampest side of
the Highlands, got wet from morning to night, and in a
week my cough had gone like dew from the heather.
But nature's hydropathy does not always work so well,
even on seasoned constitutions. The severest loss of our
Volunteer force, as yet, on British soil, has been from that
soaking royal review at Edinburgh, when Highlanders
were killed and crippled by a long railway journey in
drenched clothes, even though at the way-stations matron
190
RIVER AWE FLOWING TO LOCH ETIVE,
ARGYLLSHIRE
The Great Glen
and maid brought them patriotic offerings of dry hose,
with which at least to " change their feet."
Now let us turn to the tourist, who has neither lust
nor license to ruffle the least feather of grouse or gull, but
calls forth angry passions when his red guide-book or
her sunshade come scaring the prey stalked by lords of
Cockaigne and Porkopolis. He and she, by coveys,
swarm in various directions from Inverness, but chiefly by
the Caledonian Canal, that highroad of pleasure, as once
of business, between the North and the South Highlands.
Had we seen this road u before it was made," we should
find little difference to-day, unless for a few more modern
mansions that have swallowed up many a lowly home,
still, perhaps, marked by patches of green about the ruined
mountain shielings where, as on Alpine pastures, Highland
Sennerin made butter and cheese through the long summer
days. A steamboat carries one right through the Great
Glen, beneath mountain giants, clad in nature's own tartan
of green and purple chequered by brown and grey, with
bare knees of crag, and streaming sporrans of cascade, and
feathers of fir- wood, too often wrapped in a plaid of mist, or
hidden by a mackintosh of drenching rain. Else, against
the clear sky-line, one may catch sight of a noble stag on
the hill head, displayed like its crest, sniffing motionless at
the steamer far below, unconscious of an unseen enemy
stealing up the rearward corrie with heart athrob for his
blood, which, at the pull of a trigger, may or may not
stain the heath.
From its port below Craig Phadric, believed to have
been the stronghold of a king older than Duncan, then
past the hill bearing his name, the Canal soon takes us
191
Bonnie Scotland
through the fertile strath into the wilder Highlands. The
first stage of that grand panorama is through deep Loch
Ness, where on one side Mealfourvonie towers like a hay-
rick, round which goes the way to those remote Falls of
Glomach, called the noblest in Britain, and on the other
are more easily reached the Falls of Foyers, chained and
set to work by an Aluminium Company that did not
tremble at the rhapsody of Christopher North : —
"Here is solitude with a vengeance — stern, grim, dungeon
solitude ! How ghostlike those white, skeleton pines, stripped of
their rind by tempest and lightning, and dead to the din of the
raging cauldron ! That cataract, if descending on a cathedral,
would shatter down the pile into a million of fragments. But it
meets the black foundations of the cliff, and flies up to the starless
heaven in a storm of spray. We are drenched, as if leaning in
a hurricane over the gunwale of a ship, rolling under bare poles
through a heavy sea. The very solid globe of earth quakes through
her entrails. The eye, reconciled to the darkness, now sees a
glimmering and gloomy light — and lo, a bridge of a single arch
hung across the chasm, just high enough to let through the
triumphant torrent. Has some hill-loch burst its barriers ? For
what a world of waters come now tumbling into the abyss !
Niagara ! hast thou a fiercer roar ? Listen — and you think there
are momentary pauses of the thunder, filled up with goblin groans !
All the military music-bands of the army of Britain would here
be dumb as mutes — Trumpet, Cymbal, and the Great Drum !
There is a desperate temptation in the hubbub to leap into de-
struction. Water-horses and kelpies, keep stabled in your rock-
stalls — for if you issue forth the river will sweep you down, before
you have finished one neigh, to Castle Urquhart, and dash you, in
a sheet of foam, to the top of her rocking battlements. . . . We
emerge, like a gay creature of the element, from the chasm, and
wing our way up the glen towards the source of the cataract. In
192
The Great Glen
a few miles all is silent. A more peaceful place is not among all
the mountains. The water-spout that had fallen during night
has found its way into Loch Ness, and the torrent has subsided
into a burn. What the trouts did with themselves in the 'red
jawing speat' we are not naturalist enough to affirm, but we
must suppose they have galleries running far into the banks, and
corridors cut in the rocks, where they swim about in water with-
out a gurgle, safe as golden and silver fishes in a glass-globe, on
the table of my lady's boudoir. Not a fin on their backs has been
injured — not a scale struck from their starry sides. There they
leap in the sunshine among the burnished clouds of insects, that
come floating along on the morning air from bush and bracken,
the licheny cliff-stones, and the hollow-rinded woods."
At the head of Loch Ness our boat takes to locks again
at Fort-Augustus, now turned into a Catholic monastery,
arms yielding to the gown. Hence, if the rain persistently
blot out all prospect, we might hasten on by branch
railway to the West Highland Line, passing near those
geological lions called the " parallel roads " of Glenroy.
Else we thread the water between the heights of Keppoch
and Glengarry, marked by the cairns of many a forgotten
feud, and through Loch Oich and Loch Lochy come to
cross the West Highland Railway at Banavie, where the
Canal descends to sea level by a staircase of locks like
that at Trollhatta on the not less famous waterway from
Gothenburg to Stockholm.
Loch Oich, the smallest of the chain into which the
Garry comes down from its basin, has an authentic legend as
retreat of Ewen Macphee, perhaps the last British outlaw
above the rank of a lurking poacher or illicit distiller.
Early in the nineteenth century he enlisted in a Highland
regiment, from which he deserted, and though captured and
'93 25
Bonnie Scotland
handcuffed, made a romantic escape to his native wilds of
Glengarry. After camping in the woods till the hue and
cry after him had died out, he settled on an islet of Loch
Oich, where he took to himself a wife and reared a sturdy
brood. For long he played Rob Roy on a small scale,
" lifting " sheep and helping himself to game, while he
enjoyed the sanctity of a seer's reputation. When a
southern landlord bought the property, he established a not
unfriendly modus vivendi with this tackless tenant, who
introduced himself to the new owner by sticking his dirk
into the table as title-deed to his island — " By this right I
hold it ! " But by and by the minions of the law pressed
upon his retreat ; and in spite of a resolute defence, in
which his wife handled a gun like a modern Helen Mac-
gregor, he was arrested for sheep stealing, and taken to
prison, where he pined away after a long life of lawless
freedom. Bales of sheep skins and tallow, found hidden
about his fastness, were evidence of how he had lived at
the expense of his neighbours, a feature too much left out
of sight in modern regret for the picturesque old times.
Banavie — that seems to be a kilted cousin of Banff, and
forebear of the Rocky Mountain paradise an American
geographer presumes to spell Bamf — is close to Fort-
William, the southernmost of the three military posts
that bridled the Great Glen. In Stuart days this was
Inverlochy, scene of that battle between Montrose and
Argyle. It is now a town of snug hotels, over which
rises the proclaimed monarch of British mountains, his
gloomy brow often crowned with mist and his precipitous
shoulders er mined with snow at any season. But if the
weather favour, from the Observatory Tower at the top,
194
A CROFT NEAR TAYNUILT, LOCH ETIVE,
ARGYLLSHIRE
The Great Glen
one has the far-spread prospect masterly laid out by Sir
Archibald Geikie : —
" While no sound falls upon his ear, save now and then a fitful
moaning of the wind among the snow-rifts of the dark precipice
below, let him try to analyse some of the chief elements of the
landscape. It is easy to recognise the more marked heights and
hollows. To the south, away down Loch Linnhe, he can see the
hills of Mull and the Paps of Jura closing the horizon. Westward,
Loch Eil seems to lie at his feet, winding up into the lonely
mountains, yet filled twice a day with the tides of the salt sea.
Far over the hills, beyond the head of the loch, he looks across
Arisaig, and can see the cliffs of the Isle of Eigg and the dark peaks
of Rum, with the Atlantic gleaming below them. Farther to the
north-west the blue range of the Coolin Hills rises along the sky-
line, and then, sweeping over all the intermediate ground, through
Arisaig and Knoydart and the Clanranald country, mountain rises
beyond mountain, ridge beyond ridge, cut through by dark glens,
and varied here and there with the sheen of lake and tarn. North-
ward runs the mysterious straight line of the Great Glen, with its
chain of lochs. Thence to east and south the same billowy sea of
mountain-tops stretches out as far as eye can follow it — the hills
and glens of Lochaber, the wide green strath of Spean, the grey
corries of Glen Treig and Glen Nevis, the distant sweep of the
moors and mountains of Brae Lyon and the Perthshire Highlands,
the spires of Glencoe, and thence round again to the blue waters of
Loch Linnhe."
Hitherto the drenched tourist has been too ready to
hasten away towards drier Saxondom by steamboat or rail
from the end of the Caledonian Canal, ignorant what
choice spots may hereabouts be lingered among, such as
that " Dark Mile," which some have found better worth
seeing than the Trossachs, and Glen Nevis that, opening
as a lush valley, mounts by rushing falls into recesses of
'95
Bonnie Scotland
wild magnificence. Now the West Highland Railway
takes one on through Glenfinnan and the Lochiel country,
where Charles Edward raised that last standard of re-
bellion, against the prudent judgment of the Cameron
chief whose loyal pride yet followed it to Culloden, and
where a tall column records how a later Cameron fell as
gallantly in the service of the established dynasty. Thus
we come to Arisaig on the west coast, and to Mallaig
opposite Skye, in which a book that draws to its end must
not venture to enter upon the most gloomily grand aspects
of Highland scenery. All this, like the country above the
Moray Firth, comes under the head of " counsels of per-
fection " ; but every conscientious Highland tour takes in
Inverness, on the round made by the Highland Railway
and the Caledonian Canal, the most perfunctory minimum
being the Trossachs trip, which might be extended to pass
by Oban and the Clyde.
196
CHAPTER X
GLASGOW AND THE CLYDE
AT the junction of salt and fresh water navigation, beside
Fort -William, the tourist begins a new stage of his
journey, if in haste, speeding by the West Highland
Railway through beautiful glens and over bleak and bare
moorlands to come on the Clyde at Helensburgh. The
older pilgrimage is by steamer down Loch Linnhe to
Oban, past Ballachulish, where, if the Saxon can get his
tongue round its name, he may land to visit "dreary
dark Glencoe," whose grimly sublime seclusion seems
in keeping with its tragic memories and with its legendary
fame as birthplace of Ossian.
Oban, " Charing Cross of the Highlands," which
Cockneys sometimes confuse with Holborn, and which
in thick weather may rather suggest the Tilbury Docks,
had in Dr. Johnson's day one " tolerable inn," now
multiplied into a forest of hostelries, "a huddlement of
upstart houses," above which the shell of an unhatched
Hydropathic looks down on darker ruins of the <c Land of
Lome." Here the not impecunious traveller might tarry
long to visit the islands around or the lochs and falls
inland. Turning his back on the cloudy Atlantic, he
197
Bonnie Scotland
may take the Caledonian Railway by Loch Awe, Loch
Tay and Loch Earn, and thus be wafted to Perth, Edin-
burgh, or Glasgow, while at Tyndrum it is open to him
to make a cut across to the West Highland Line. But
his most beaten path is still a watery one, on to the
Crinan Canal, and through it to Ardrishaig, where he
enters on the safe and luxurious navigation of the Clyde.
This is not a guide-book that can afford to expatiate
in small print on all the aisles and monuments of this
grand estuary, with its lochs opening like side chapels.
The stranger will do well to halt almost wherever he
pleases, and at a dozen resorts has a choice of steamboats
plying up and down the water, as a Glasgow man calls it,
even as his ancestors named the Esks and Avons which
for them were alone familiar. The butterfly tourist, if he
get a fine day or two, may settle on Tarbert, the isthmus
of Cantire ; or at Inveraray, the ducal village- capital of
Argyll ; or at Dunoon, its largest town ; or at Rothesay,
the Swindon Junction of this inland voyaging ; or at the
Cumbraes, whose minister prayed for " the adjacent
islands of Great Britain and Ireland " ; or at one and
another of those snug bathing-places that almost line the
shores. The gem, the bouquet^ the crown of all Clyde
scenery is, of course, Arran, to know which non cuivis
contingit. But if he can find quarters in some airy hovel
with rats running about the roof, or on some shake-down
of an hotel annexe, and if the rain clears up over Goatfell,
the reader will not regret taking my word for the exceed-
ing loveliness of glens and corries, which have inspired
painters, poets, and even guide-book makers.
Many writers have described Clyde voyaging. To
198
GLENCOE, ARGYLLSHIRE
Glasgow and the Clyde
save myself trouble, let me borrow from the ingenious
M. Jules Verne, who in his Rayon-Vert gives a remarkable
account of this region and its inhabitants. It is always
well to see ourselves as others see us, especially through
the eyes of a famous story-teller. This story of his
is intended to be amusing, and he appears to succeed
in being funnier than he knew by reading up Sir Walter
Scott and other works of fiction, then " combining his
information."
The time is the present day ; the scene opens on the
Clyde ; the dramatis person* are as follows : Two old
bachelor brothers, Sam and Sib Melvill, have been
avowedly " lifted " from those chieftains of the southron
clan Cheeryble. They live together in kindly one-
mindedness ; they take snuff out of the same box ; they
quote Ossian in alternate stanzas, also Scott, and such
good old Scottish proverbs as "let us leave that fly
tranquil on the wall." They especially agree in spoiling
their niece, Miss Helena Campbell, who, like other heroines
of fiction, is beautiful to behold, and like other Scottish
damsels of rank, does her hair up in a snood, believes in
valkyries and " browines," then, though as good as she is
charming, has a most troublesome obstinacy in getting
her own way. This is a rich family, who have a town
house in Glasgow and a cottage near Helensburgh, opposite
the promontory always spelt " Rosenheat," a cottage of
much gentility, with a tower, a terrace, and a park.
Over a large household rule two faithful retainers of the
olden time, (i) the "intendant" Partridge, who always
sports tartan in the form of a kilt " above the philabeg,"
with blue bonnet, cow-skin brogues and other trappings
199
Bonnie Scotland
of a Highland butler's livery ; (2) a venerable house-
keeper, who, like all housekeepers in the Highlands, bears
the title of " Luckie," but is also styled Dame Bess, and
addressed by Partridge as " Mavourneen," that well-
known Scottish term of endearment, while her masters
invariably summon her by crying " Bet ! Beth ! Bess !
Betsey ! Betty ! " each word taking up a line, so as to
make what printers call " fat " and what French authors,
from the great Dumas downwards, must find very con-
venient for stretching out " copy."
Though Sam and Sib are Glasgow aristocrats, they
seem so far in touch with the great metropolis as to take
in the Morning Post, in which one day Miss Campbell
reads an account of a wonderful green ray shed by the
unclouded sun at his setting on an open sea horizon.
Nothing will serve this wilful young lady but at once
setting out to behold such an optical phenomenon.
Gifted as she is, our heroine can have passed no high
standard of geography, but her uncles explain to her
that Oban is the nearest place at which an open sea view
can be had. Va pour Oban I she exclaims. The sly
uncles agree on the trip, all the more readily as they
are aware how at Oban happens to be sojourning a certain
Aristobulus Ursiclos, on whom they have their eye as an
excellent parti for their ward.
The household is at once thrown into a confusion of
packing, for by seven o'clock next morning it is necessary
to be in Glasgow to catch the Oban steamer Columba,
which seems rather a roundabout route for residenters at
Helensburgh. At this early hour the party punctually
embark, to be carried admiringly down the scenery of the
200
Glasgow and the Clyde
Clyde, though, indeed, the faithful steward and house-
keeper, always in attendance, shake their heads in sad
harmony at every stage over the engines and smoke stacks
that are overshadowing good old Highland customs, the
sole example of which here given is unhappily referred to
the Orkney Kirkwall. Messrs. MacBrayne have no cause
of complaint as to praise of the steamer and her accom-
modations ; but the proprietors of Murray's Guide, with
which the party are provided rather than Black's, might
find ground of action in the French printers' libellous
misspellings of names. That work is duly drawn on for
notices of Dumbarton Castle, of Greenock, of ruined
strongholds, and of the distant crests of Arran and Ailsa
Craig. The passengers hold stiffly aloof in groups, except
of course some French tourists, who bring their native
sociability with them ; but there is none of the British
morgue about Partridge, when he claps his hands in applause
at the sight of a tower ruined for the MacDouglases by
his young mistress' clan. They sail safely through the
Kyles of Bute, past Ardrishaig, by the Crinan Canal, then
up the Hebrides archipelago to Oban, where they install
themselves, regardless of expense, in the best rooms of the
Caledonian Hotel, awaiting the first fine sunset to catch
the green ray.
At this ville des bains, not more than " a hundred and
fifty years old," in August crowded with bathers, who
do not satisfy French ideas of propriety by a bathing
costume souvenf trop rudimentaire, our friends soon fall in
with Aristobulus Ursiclos, a mere Lowlander, who wears
no kilt but, on the contrary, aluminium spectacles and such
like, and having graduated both at Oxford and Edinburgh,
201 26 .
Bonnie Scotland
is a scientist pour rire, not to say a prig and pedant of the
darkest dye, seizing every chance to lecture on meteorology,
mineralogy, chemistry, astronomy, in short de omni re
scibili. It goes without saying that Miss Campbell at first
sight takes a strong dislike to this false hero, who at once
sets about playing the superior person over such a childish
fancy as the green ray, also excites her contempt by his
awkwardness at the British game of " crocket." Equally of
course, a true hero has already been provided, a ram caught
in one of the handy thickets of romance as due sacrifice to
Hymen. This is Oliver Sinclair, a young and sympathetic
artist, who sends notes of his travels to the celebrated
Edinburgh Review, but at present has nothing more
pressing on hand than to attach himself to the party.
The episodes of the story henceforth turn upon repeated
efforts to see the green ray, always baffled by the weather
or by some clumsy interference of Mr. Aristobulus, who
can never understand when he is not wanted, though able
to rebuke his companions' enthusiasm for the sea by
instructing them that it is merely a chemical compound of
hydrogen and oxygen with 2^ per cent of chloride of
sodium. In vain they hire a carriage-and-four to drive to
the " village of Clachan," and on to one of the outlying
islands, from which there is a clear sea view, at Oban, as
we know, blocked by the island of " Kismore."
After weeks of disappointment and bad weather, the
whole party take steamer for lona, where they put up at
the " Duncan Arms," feasting daily upon a truly Scottish
menu of haggis, hotch-potch, cockie-leekie, sowens and
oat cake, the Highland Cheeryble brothers pledging one
another in pint stoups — containing four English pints, we
202
GARELOCHHEAD, DUMBARTONSHIRE
.
Glasgow and the Clyde
learn — of " foaming usquebaugh," also in a drink called
" whisky," with strong beer, " mum," and " twopenny "
flavoured with a petit verre of gin. A Scottish breakfast,
it appears, is a slighter meal, consisting of " tea, butter,
and sandwiches." This good cheer is so engrossing that
only after a few days they recall the fact of there being
some ruins on lona, which are then visited and described
at much length, with all due enthusiasm on the part of the
author. Dr. Johnson declares the man little to be envied
whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of
lona. That man is soulless Aristobulus, who excites our
heroine's indignation by the cold-blooded manner in which
he would peep and geologise among so sacred monuments,
hammering off a piece of a cross to examine it as a mineral
specimen. Worse, just as she was about to see the green
ray, this unlucky spoil-sport lets off a gun, scaring up a
cloud of gulls to obscure the for once bright sunset.
Miss Campbell is determined at any cost to shake off
such a hateful suitor. She hears of another island called
StafFa, from which a still opener view can be had. Nothing
will hinder that in the frequented port of lona a " Cowes-
built " yacht is waiting to be hired. The obedient uncles
charter her forthwith, engage a brass-bound captain and a
crew" of six men, provision her suitably, and sail off for
StafFa, which, as the author explains, is at no great distance.
Aristobulus, with his hammer and spectacles, is left behind,
henceforth dropping out of the story.
Our heroine, having had the geological marvels of
StafFa explained to her, is so delighted that she proposes
to buy the island. Their yacht blown away before a
storm, the passengers encamp in a cave and go through
203
Bonnie Scotland
perilous adventures, for the scenery of which the guide-
book comes in useful. Oliver Sinclair, whose life Helena
had been the means of saving at his first appearance
on the scene, now in turn rescues her in most romantic
style ; and the young pair are so taken up with each
other that they almost forget all about the green ray in
search of which those long-suffering uncles have been
dragged so far. At last comes one clear glorious sunset,
lighting up a panorama of sea line that could not but
have excited admiration even in " the most prosaic
merchant (negotiant) of the Canongate." As the sun
disappears, all the party behold the long-sought wonder,
all but the hero and heroine, who are too intent on the
rays lit in each other's eyes by a " light that never was on
sea or land." After this, there is nothing left but " Bless
you, my children," and a sumptuous marriage in "St.
George's Church, Glasgow," transported for the occasion,
apparently, from Hanover Square. All which, if one
skip the guide-book passages, makes a very striking
account of Scottish manners and customs, but prompts
some doubt of the author's accuracy when he comes to
deal with such more remote regions as the moon or the
bottom of the sea.
It seems a rule with French writers to be careless
about the local colour of their foreign scenes. Well
known is the haughty answer of Victor Hugo to the
Englishman who ventured to remonstrate with him on
his Lords "Tom Jim Jack," and other ornaments of
British aristocracy. He at least spared Scotland, — or was
it he who translated the Firth of Forth by k premier
du quatrieme, as another traducteur elevated " a stickit
204
Glasgow and the Clyde
minister " into un prdtre assassine1 ? If it be true that
Dumas' chief "ghost'* was by origin a Scotsman named
Mackay, that voluminous romancer was ill -served in
the wild work made for him of British topography.
D'Artagnan, landing at Dover, found our posts " pretty
well served," so well, indeed, that starting at 2.30 P.M.
he rode to London in four hours, then on to Windsor,
followed the king to a hunting-ground two or three
leagues beyond, and galloped back to Buckingham House,
all before nightfall, a feat that beats Dick Turpin and
John Gilpin. When Charles I. exclaimed "Remember! "
with his dying breath, he was of course addressing that
preux chevalier Athos, hidden below the scaffold ; and
what Athos should remember was how the king had
stowed a million of money in two barrels under the
vaults of the Abbey of Newcastle. In due time Athos
goes to turn up this deposit, then from Monk's camp
at Coldstream on the Tweed, he and the General stroll
over to Newcastle in the course of half an hour or so.
Athos of course comes off successful in this midnight
quest, but not so Monk, who, as M. Dumas first informed
us, was kidnapped by D'Artagnan in the midst of his
army and carried off in a fishing boat from Coldstream to
Holland, to be laid bound before his lawful king, brought
back after all in time to prevent Athos from exterminating
a company of Scottish soldiers in defence of his million.
The whole series of those Three Musketeers' adventures
contains many such curious side lights on the history of
our country. In a comic opera, of course, one need not
read up for examinations ; yet Scribe's Dame Blanche,
bearing to the Monastery and Guy Mannering much the
205
Bonnie Scotland
same relation as Thackeray's Rebecca and Rowena to
Ivanhoe, should not have opened with a rustic Scots
couple hard up for a godfather to their child, nor ended
with the sale of an estate that carried with it a peerage and
a seat in Parliament.
Perhaps, after all, Scottish writers may be trusted for
a more faithful picture of their own country ; and one
would commend the reader rather to Sarah Tytler's
St. Mung(?s City as a truthful and taking tale of Glasgow
life, including a trip on the Clyde under characteristic
circumstances. Only this trip is not one to be suggested
to strangers, since it is an incident of Glasgow Fair, that
concentrated week of more than Bank Holiday-making,
when the great city of the West disperses itself to its
waterside resorts so recklessly that in the familiar rainy
weather churches as well as police stations may have to
be thrown open to thousands of roofless and hundreds
of senseless guests. Let the Sir Charles Grandisons of
the south, and the Miss Ophelias of the States mix
themselves rather with the Trades Holidays' bustle of
Edinburgh, or the I2th August distraction of Perth
station.
" The steamer (as our author describes this popular excursion),
fluttering with flags from stem to stern, was pushing down the
river on the sunny yet showery summer day, preceded and followed
by many similar vessels, through the labyrinth of shipping from
every part of the world — past wharves and warehouses deserted by
toilers — past the yards, well known to ship-builders, with skeleton
ships on the stocks, where the sheds were forsaken and the din
mute. Down and down the living freight went, till green
pastures and ripening cornfields began to smile under the very
206
GLEN SANNOX, ISLE OF ARRAN
Glasgow and the Clyde
frown of the hills rising in the distance. Here was the heart-
shaped rock of Dumbarton, with the castle where Wallace had
lain a prisoner. There were the crowded roofs of Greenock,
clustered under its own storm-cloud, hanging over the city
churchyard where Highland Mary was laid to rest. Yonder
ran the Tail of the Bank, by which fleets have ridden at anchor,
where Colin's solitary ship was seen through the morning mists by
the sharp eyes of the loving gude-wife, so fain to tell that her man
was 'come to town.' This was the entrance to the loch by
whose shore the race of Macallum More slept soundly. Across
the river the warning white finger of the Cloch Lighthouse bade
belated crafts beware. Roseneath was fair as when Jeanie Deans
landed under the guardianship of the Duke's man. At Toward
Point the tenderest of Highland tragedies lingered with the
memory of the old clan Lament. At last the twin islands of
Bute and Arran came full in sight, and Goatfell rose, brown and
grey and russet — not purple as yet — unrivalled from the sea, and
held up a rugged face to the fleecy clouds."
Reversing this route, and shortening it by train from
Greenock, we come to St. Mungo's City, by Liverpool's
leave, the second in Britain, yet none of your mushroom
Chicagos, but a good old Lanark borough that has spread
itself far over two counties, since the days when its
Broomielaw harboured a few small craft, and its Fair
was confined to the Green, on which the Earl of Moray
encamped before crushing Queen Mary's cause in half an
hour, at the battle of Langside, its field now within the
extended municipal bounds. In her time Glasgow was
already known as the Market of the West, showing the
rudiments of a varied fabrication in its plaiding, and in
such a "Glasgow buckler" as the adventurous Queen
would fain have carried when she wished she were a man
207
Bonnie Scotland
to "lie all night in the fields," and swagger mail-clad
along the crown of the causeway.
Max O'Rell and other moderns have said very unkind
things of Glasgow ; but all the early travellers extol the
prettiness, pleasantness, and cleanness of this city on a
once limpid river, qualities not so apparent nowadays.
Along with too many most squalid slums, Glasgow has
fine features in her ancient Cathedral, in her lofty
Necropolis, in her picturesque Trongate, in her noble
University Buildings elevated above the West End Park,
and in her central square with its forest of illustrious
effigies, "an open-air Madame Tussaud's." But these
monuments are not so remarkable as the wealth and mani-
fold industry of which signs abound on every hand,
drowning the rustic charms noted by Defoe and Burt.
In the Commonwealth days Richard Franck had dubbed
Glasgow the "non-such of Scotland" — "famous and
flourishing " — on whose " beautiful palaces " and ware-
houses " stuft with merchandise " he expatiates in his
conceited style. Even the crabbed Matthew Bramble
was " in raptures with Glasgow." Pennant twice calls
this " the best built of any second-rate city I ever saw,"
and tells how Glasgow had been " tantalised with its
river," soon to be deepened into such a highway of
traffic.
By the middle of the eighteenth century Glasgow had
not 20,000 inhabitants, but she began to make her fortune
fast while the rest of Scotland rather sullenly prepared to
exchange thistly patriotism for more profitable crops.
Rum and tobacco were the foundation of a prosperity
that came to be checked by the American Revolution ;
208
Glasgow and the Clyde
then the long-headed worthies of the Saltmarket took up
cotton, and cotton was weighed down by iron, and iron
was set afloat as well as wood ; and a host of other trades
sprang up, among them that Turkey-red dyeing that is
for Glasgow what its purple was for Tyre.
On Glasgow Green, we are told, James Watt thought
of the steam condenser that was the great practical step
towards starting such merry-go-roundabouts here at Fair
time, and so many wheels on which the progress of the
world has spun with such acceleration <c down the ringing
grooves of change." If the first model of a steamship
was made in Edinburgh, the first passenger paddle-boat
that plied in Britain was that between Greenock and
Glasgow in 1812. Glasgow, not quite so large as
Edinburgh in James Watt's lifetime, had then begun
to give the capital the go-by, even before she became
environed by a wilderness of " pits and blast furnaces
that honeycomb and blacken the earth, and burn with a
red glare throughout the night for many a mile around,"
where another writer describes daylight showing " patches
of sour-looking grass surrounded by damp stone walls ;
gaunt buildings soot -begrimed and gloomy ; and an
ever-increasing blue-grey mist pierced by tall chimneys."
St. Kentigern, whose petit nom was Mungo, could hardly
now identify the site of his hermitage among noisy Clyde
ship-yards and busy streets, noted by jealous neighbours
as too familiar with
The merchant rain that carries on
Rich commerce 'twixt the earth and sun.
The relations between the two chief cities of Scotland
209 27
Bonnie Scotland
have been a little stiff since Glasgow rose so high in the
world, as how should a laird of old pedigree, crippled by
forfeitures and mortgages, not look askance from his
castellated turrets on the spick and span buildings of an
upstart millionaire neighbour, the one standing on his
name and title, the other on his shrewdness, honesty, and
strict attention to business rather than the graces of life.
One suspects Sarah Tytler to be no west-countrywoman,
from her kindly hits at Glasgow cotton lords and iron
lords, with more money than they always knew what to
do with, a generation ago ; yet she loudly extols their
generosity and public spirit ; and in our time Bailie
Jarvie's successors have distinguished themselves, like
their rivals at Manchester and Liverpool, by a liberal
patronage of art, proof of which may be seen in the new
Corporation Gallery that is a legacy of the last Exhibition.
Edinburgh wits are not so scornful now towards Glasgow
cits, as in the days when Kit North — himself a Paisley
body — joked his coarsest at the expense of the " Glasgow
Gander," and Aytoun told scandalous tales of the Glen-
mutchk in Railway and the Dreepdaily Burghs.
In spirit and sentiment, the two cities have not always
seen eye to eye. Auld Reekie often showed herself a
bit of a Tory, the ladies of the family having even a
tenderness for Jacobitism and philabegry, since Rob Roy
lived not so close to their gates, and they knew the
Dougai Cratur only as a red-nosed porter or town-guard
of bygone days : thus the Red Indian, beneath whose
war-paint the western settler could see no good unless
mark for a bullet, might be hailed as a noble savage in
Boston or New York. But Glasgow has always been
LOCH TRIOCHATAN, ENTRANCE TO GLENCOE>
ARGYLLSHIRE
Glasgow and the Clyde
Whig, with grey homespun for its own wear rather than
the tartans it manufactured in the way of business. It
would have as little dealing as might be with the Pretender,
an unwelcome guest who took it on his way back to the
Highlands, and forced the citizens to rig out his ragged
army with coats, shirts, and bonnets. In the troubled
days of early Radicalism, again, the city of the west
seethed with sedition, almost breaking out into revolt.
Glasgow was also markedly Presbyterian from an early
date, and its monuments may well be crowned by one to
John Knox. Its Cathedral is said to have been defended
by pious craftsmen against an iconoclast mob ; but in
this reformed fane, under Charles I., met the Covenanting
Assembly whose denunciation of prelates counts as the
second Reformation. Even in the days when they dealt
in rum, the Glasgow folk were noted as sober and douce,
their morals, indeed, being pushed to austerity. Episcopal
ministers and other bad characters were driven out of St.
Mungo's bounds, when its licensed preachers became
chosen from the "High flying" party of the Church.
Theatrical performances were here held in horror after
these had ceased to be banned in the capital. And as for
the Sabbath-keeping that was the sacrament of old Presby-
terianism, hear what Mr. H. G. Graham, in his instructive
Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, has to
record of Glasgow : —
" To secure proper observance of the Sabbath, compurgators,
or 4 bumbailies,' patrolled the streets and wynds on Saturday night
to see that by ten o'clock all folk were quietly at home ; and if
incautious sounds betokening untimely revelry issued from behind
a door, or a stream of light from chinks of a window-shutter
211
Bonnie Scotland
betrayed a jovial company within, they entered and broke up the
party which dared to be happy so near the Lord's own day. On
Sabbath, as in other towns, the seizers or elders, in their turn,
perambulated the streets during divine service, and visited the
Green in the evening, haling all 'vaguers* to kirk or session.
The profound stillness of the Sabbath was preternatural, except
when the multitudinous tramp of heavy shoes came from a vast
voiceless throng of churchgoers. In these streets of which the
patrols c made a solitude and called it peace,' at all other hours no
persons passed, no sound was heard, no dog dared bark. In the
mirk Sabbath nights no lamp was lit, because all but profane
persons were engaged in solemn exercises at home. During the
day the window-shutters were, in strict households, just opened
enough to let inmates see to walk about the room, or to read the
Bible by sitting close to the window-panes."
Times have changed in Glasgow, for here Sunday
trams came to be suffered before they desecrated Edin-
burgh. A certain vieille roche minister of Arran, not yet
forgotten, who used to startle strange worshippers by
addressing them, " O ye to wrists and eemissaries of the
deevil ! " was also, if all tales be true, in the way of
warning his flock that they grew wicked as Glasgow folk,
and almost as bad as them of Edinburgh — the superlative
profligacy of London being no doubt taken for granted.
But some such moralist seems to have met his match in
two Glasgow urchins whom he rebukefully catechised :
" Whaur will laddies gang that play themselves on the
Sabbath?" With real or assumed innocence one of the
boys answered, " Tae the Green ! " Then, on the stern
corrector more fully explaining the drift of that question,
he heard the lad exclaim, " Rin awa,' Jock ; we mauna
listen to the bad man sweirin' ! " — an attitude now
212
Glasgow and the Clyde
largely taken towards extreme Sabbatarians, even in
Glasgow.
The more liberal spirit of contemporary Glasgow is
largely due to its popular minister of half a century ago,
Norman Macleod, who infected the Scottish Church
with much of his own heartiness and width of mind.
Many good stories are told of him, such as, a generation
earlier, crystallised rather round the eminent personality
of Dr. Chalmers, also a Glasgow minister. One, which
Macleod used to tell of himself, seems an essence of the
national character as developed under modern influences.
This burly West Highlander, along with a reverend
brother of feebler physique, having taken boat among
the Hebrides, they were caught in such a storm that one
of the boatmen proposed the ministers should pray ; but
" Na, na," said another ; " let the little ane pray, but the
big ane maun tak' an oar ! " He has also told with
much gusto how, in the early days of his ministry, he was
put to the test of orthodoxy by a deaf old woman, who,
adjusting her ear-trumpet, screamed at him, "Gang ower
the fundamentals ! " Another story, not so likely to be
quite true, but representing a very human side of his
nature, refers to a notorious Glasgow murderer, who
capped a cold-blooded crime by treating himself to the
services of this approved divine on the scaffold. It is
said that the ghostly counsellor was so sickened by the
man's cant, that on his last words, " Good-bye, Doctor :
we shall meet again in the next world ! " Macleod could
not refrain from ejaculating, perhaps in the less emphatic
Greek, « God forbid ! "
Good Words, the popular magazine founded by Dr.
213
Bonnie Scotland
Norman Macleod, made a powerful solvent of Presbyterian
seventy, introducing into family life stories for Sunday
reading, along with broader views that called forth loud
protests from more orthodox theologians. Another such
influence was the novels of Dr. George MacDonald, in
which he tossed and gored Calvinism with much acceptance,
when formal statements of his doctrine would have been
recognised as having foenum in cornu. The " Kailyard "
Muse so much in vogue of late quite openly flirts with
the carnal man, cuts up the Shorter Catechism to make
curl-papers for more " up to date " sentiments, and grinds
down the forefathers' faith for picturesque local colour.
This generation hardly yet recognises a turn of the tide
that floats such fiction into popularity. The plain fact is,
which some do not love to hear stated, that the Churches
of Scotland are passing into a transition state of unstable
compounds, that would have horrified their old doctors.
The absolute has thawed into the relative, and some of
the once so solid landmarks of faith are already evaporat-
ing out of a fluid state into a very gaseous one. It is
hard for hereditary believers to measure their drift from
cast-off moorings ; but the many Scotsmen living out of
Scotland see, as a stranger does not, how the currents are
setting. And even to an outsider who takes any interest
in theology, it must appear that the logical turn formerly
devoted to dogmatising on the darkest mysteries is now
exercised rather in explaining away the standards and
confessions once held so sacred, still nominally in honour,
but no more consistent with actual belief than the fore-
going mixed metaphors are with each other.
214
GLEN ROSA, ISLE OF ARRAN
CHAPTER XI
THE WHIG COUNTRY
SCORCHED and blasted as much of the ground about
Glasgow is, this city lies hard by some of the finest and
most famed scenes of Scotland, to be easily reached by
land or water. Even busy Paisley, nurse of poets as
well as of weavers, has a point of high antiquarian interest
in its restored Abbey Church ; and a stretch of moorland
rises behind smoky Greenock, with its monuments to
James Watt and to " Highland Mary." Not to speak of
land- and sea-scapes " down the water," up the river,
Clydesdale shows us on what green banks and braes
Glasgow once stood, which may yet spread its octopus
arms about Cadzow and Both well Castles and the Tower
of " Tillietudlem." There has been talk of harnessing to
industry those rushing Falls of Clyde, the upper linn,
Bonnington, a miniature of Niagara that is already slave
to the Philistines. Below this fall, the mills of New
Lanark record the well-meant industrial experiments of
David Dale and his son-in-law Robert Owen. In a cave
near the Stonebyres Fall, young William Wallace took
hiding after he had slain the English sheriff at Lanark,
where now the hero's statue stands over the church door,
215
Bonnie Scotland
strangely arrayed in a kilt that gives him somewhat the
aspect of that snuff-shop Scotsman. Wallace came from
the Renfrewshire Ellerslie, and many of his guerilla
exploits were in this west country, though his noblest
monument has found a proper site near Stirling. Ayr,
town of " honest men and bonnie lasses," cherishes other
legends and memorials of him, here almost forgotten in
the renown of Robert Burns's birthplace near the mouth
of his " bonnie Doon." An hour's stroll along the sea-
shore from Ayr brings us to that humble cottage, better
neighboured by " Allo way's auld haunted kirk " than by
the pretentious classical monument that so ill fits Scotland's
"barefoot Muse." Then from this coast to Dumfries,
the valleys of the Ayr and the Nith are sown with
memories and needless monuments of the poet who spoke
the people's heart. Above Nithsdale, in the south of
Lanark, rise the Lowther Hills, that for height might
call cousins with some Highland Bens. Here stands Lead-
hills, the highest village in Scotland, birthplace of Allan
Ramsay ; and near the wider pass, through which went
the old highroad to the south, may be sought out the
" sudden and immense depths " of the Enterkin, renowned
by Defoe and by Dr. John Brown, as gloomy scene of an
encounter between persecuting dragoons and the armed
Covenanters, who had many a fastness in this hill-country.
The " Scott country " has its brightest associations in
chivalric war. The " Burns country," which is also the
Wallace country and the Bruce country, has been the
cradle of the strongest Scottish sentiment, as of the most
popular movements. Long before Burns was born, it got
the familiar name of the Whig country, as congenial soil
216
The Whig Country
for those aspirations after both political and religious
freedom that have gone so far in shaping our constitution.
Burns, it will be noted, had sucked in the political better
than the religious spirit of the region ; though he confesses
that " the Muses were all Jacobites," and once in a way he
fires up with —
The Solemn League and Covenant,
Cost Scotland blood, — cost Scotland tears,
But it sealed Freedom's sacred cause.
Here first arose the nickname Whig or Whiggamore, as
its opposite Tory did in Ireland, both of them originally
no compliments. A Whig of our time is taken to be an
eminently sober and staid, not to say lukewarm politician ;
but the first Whigs were fierce and dour enthusiasts, one
derivation of the name connecting it with whey, as what
should hint at sour-faced sectaries. In the mouth of
an Episcopalian, Whig meant a Presbyterian, while a
moderate Presbyterian used the word to stigmatise those
extremists whose doctrine was made white-hot by the
perfervidum ingenium natural to this nation. Moderate
Presbyterian is a relative term, Presbyter ianism in general
having been such a rebound from Popery and Prelacy
that it sought to hold itself toto coelo apart from them, and
in small matters as well as in great went to antipodes of
opposition, so that in some parts of Scotland, at this day,
heathen rites and customs are unwittingly better preserved
than those of Catholic Christendom. But indeed it was
an Irish Orangeman who, being asked for a death-bed
profession of faith, desired to be furnished with the
heads of Roman doctrine, and "whatever they believe,
I don't."
217 28
Bonnie Scotland
The south-west corner of Scotland, after being an early
stronghold of the Reformation, was the native heath of
those stern non-conformists who got the by-names of
"West-country Whigs," " Wild Whiggamores," and so on,
known also with good reason as "Hillmen," " Wanderers/'
" Martyrs," and in history specially as the "Covenanters."
That Solemn League and Covenant of theirs had been
accepted on both sides of the Border ; but the English
Independents came to flout it as no more binding than
" an old Almanac," and to the Scottish Cavaliers it made
a hated symbol of their long eclipse, while the right
Presbyterian clung to it as an almost inspired standard of
truth. When the reactionary measures of the Restoration
brought back Prelacy to Scotland, hundreds of ministers
gave up their homes and stipends to the more compliant
" curates " that braved popular scorn for the sake of a
living. This feeling was not, indeed, national ; in the
north, as has been shown, the adherents of Episcopacy held
their own, and sometimes had to be forcibly ejected after
the Revolution settlement. But in the " Whig Country "
almost all the ministers left their cures, gaining in reverence
what they lost in stipend. The most eloquent and zealous
of them became, each in his sphere, nucleus of those
conventicles and hillside gatherings that drew from the
parish churches the cream of Presbyterian faith, along with
some of the skim milk, for Covenanting youngsters would
find a carnal savour in sermon-going that involved a chance
of open-air adventure. Jock Elliot or Kinmont Willie
might have proved religious enough, when hard knocks
was the exercise of the day. Scott gives the Covenanting
preachers credit for taming the wild moss-troopers who
218
The Whig Country
had been recalled to activity on the Borders by the troubles
of that time. But fanaticism was the main alloy in the
devotion of old men and tender women, whose sacrifices
and sufferings for what they held the truth have endeared
their memory to their children, nay, to all Scotland.
Scott has been accused of prejudice against the
Covenanters, as represented in Old Mortality ; but surely
this charge is unjust. More than one of his ancestors
stood out on that side in those unhappy times, a fact
that would alone have bespoken his sympathy. To
my mind — making a little allowance for stage effect —
his novel gives a not unfair view of the two parties*
manners and motives ; and as a historian he thus describes
the Covenanting conventicles, that left his countrymen
with an acquired taste for field preaching, till such
ministrations had degenerated into the scenes of Burns's
« Holy Fair " :—
" The view of the rocks and hills around them, while a sight
so unusual gave solemnity to their acts of devotion, encouraged
them in the natural thought of defending themselves against
oppression, amidst the fortresses of nature's own construction, to
which they had repaired to worship the God of nature, accord-
ing to the mode their education dictated and their conscience
acknowledged. The recollection, that in these fastnesses their
fathers had often found a safe retreat from foreign invaders, must
have encouraged their natural confidence, and it was confirmed
by the success with which a stand was sometimes made against
small bodies of troops, who were occasionally repulsed by the sturdy
Whigs whom they attempted to disperse. In most cases of this
kind they behaved with moderation, inflicting no further penalty
upon such prisoners as might fall into their hands, than detaining
them to enjoy the benefit of a long sermon. Fanaticism added
219
Bonnie Scotland
marvels to encourage this new-born spirit of resistance. They
conceived themselves to be under the immediate protection of the
Power whom they worshipped, and in their heated state of mind
expected even miraculous interposition. At a conventicle held on
one of the Lomond hills in Fife, it was reported and believed
that an angelic form appeared in the air, hovering above the
assembled congregation, with his foot advanced, as if in the act
of keeping watch for their safety. On the whole, the idea of
repelling force by force, and defending themselves against the
attacks of the soldiers and others who assaulted them, when
employed in divine worship, began to become more general among
the harassed non-conformists. For this purpose many of the
congregation assembled in arms, and I received the following
description of such a scene from a lady whose mother had repeatedly
been present on such occasions : The meeting was held on the
Eildon hills, in the bosom betwixt two of the three conical tops
which form the crest of the mountain. Trusty sentinels were
placed on advanced posts all around, so as to command a view of
the country below, and give the earliest notice of the approach
of any unfriendly party. The clergyman occupied an elevated
temporary pulpit, with his back to the wind. There were few
or no males of any quality or distinction, for such persons could
not escape detection, and were liable to ruin from the consequences.
But many women of good condition, and holding the rank of
ladies, ventured to attend the forbidden meeting, and were allowed
to sit in front of the assembly. Their side-saddles were placed on
the ground to serve for seats, and their horses were tethered, or
piqueted, as it is called, in the rear of the congregation. Before
the females, and in the interval which divided them from the tent,
or temporary pulpit, the arms of the men present, pikes, swords,
and muskets, were regularly piled in such order as is used by
soldiers, so that each man might in an instant assume his own
weapons." — Tales of a Grandfather.
We know what rampagious Tories were John Wilson
220
A HIGHLAND VIEW
The Whig Country
and James Hogg, but one was a west-countryman by birth,
and the other a son of moorland hillsides ; and even they
are found testifying to the cause of their kin. "The
ancient spirit of Scotland," exclaims the shepherd at a
Noctes, " comes on me from the sky ; and the sowl within
me re-swears in silence the oath of the Covenant. There
they are — the Covenanters — a* gathered thegither, no in
fear and tremblin', but wi' Bibles in their bosoms, and
swords by their sides, in a glen deep as the sea, and still
as death. . . . When I think on these things — in olden
times the produce o' the common day — and look aroun'
me noo, I could wush to steek my e'en in the darkness o'
death, for, dearly as I love it still, alas ! I am ashamed of
my country."
Alas ! alas ! indeed, for this rhapsody makes part of
a fulmination against Catholic emancipation, a question on
which such whiskified Protestants proved themselves too
true sons of the Covenanters. The proscribed Whigs
were not less hot in testifying against all other creeds
than in asserting their own spiritual liberty. When
the Government offered their consciences some measure
of relief, the " Black Indulgence " proved as hateful as
persecution, which, indeed, they would willingly have
directed against other sects, as against " right-hand deflec-
tions and left-hand way-slidings " in their own body.
The only sect of that day that would not persecute was the
Quakers, whose turn did not come ; and Quakerism, as
judged by Wodrow, seemed but "a small remove from
Popery and Jesuitism," or from what one of his heroes
styled that " stinking weed," Prelacy. On the other side
of the Atlantic Roger Williams for the first time had
221
Bonnie Scotland
begun to preach religious toleration ; but there the pre-
valent sentiment was expressed by a Puritan divine who
denounced " Polypiety as the greatest impiety in the
world." Puritan or Prelatist, it was the party in power
on which rested the guilt and the shame of spiritual
tyranny. On the other hand, the suffering party may
have entered into a renown of virtues beyond their desert.
A generation that hardly knows the Fourfold State even
by name, sees little in those martyrs but their wrongs,
their harshness and narrowness forgot, their own occasional
crimes, their misspent zeal for " dogmas long since dead,
pious vituperation on antagonists long buried in dust and
forgetfulness ; breathless insistence on questions which
time has answered with a yawn."
At least the westland Covenanters bore manfully the
scourge which they looked on as an instrument of
righteousness, but for the time laid on the wrong
shoulders. Their enthusiasm was not to be damped by
the scenery of their secret gatherings. Boldly they took
the sword against a conformity dictated by dragoon
colonels, by selfish statesmen, and by such a sacred
majesty as Charles II.'s. If only they had added to their
faith the practical spirit of the English Roundheads, who
did not neglect discipline for doctrine !
In the Whig country was borne highest that blue
banner inscribed in letters of gold " For Christ's Crown
and Covenant." At Lanark gathered to a head the first
rising of 1666, easily crushed among the Pentlands when
the rustic army had fallen back from the gates of
latitudinarian Edinburgh. At Rutherglen, near Glasgow,
began the second outbreak, stirred up by the brutal
222
The Whig Country
murderers of Archbishop Sharpe ; then it was near Loudon
Hill, where the counties of Lanark, Ayr, and Renfrew
meet, that a half-armed congregation routed Claverhouse's
guardsmen on the morass of Drumclog. This casual
success was wasted on an army that, when a few thousand
strong, dared to defy the forces of the three kingdoms.
Torn by fanatical dissensions, paying more attention to
loud-lunged preachers than to prudent officers, it met at
Bothwell Bridge the fate that was a foregone conclusion.
Cameron, leader of the "wild" or extreme party, was
followed up and slain in that desolate moorland region,
"without grandeur, without even the dignity of
mountain wildness, yet striking from the huge proportion
it seemed to bear to such more favoured spots of the
country as were adapted to cultivation." In caves and
remote cottages skulked the faithful remnant, while per-
secution raged unchecked for years. Dark and bloody are
the memories of that " killing time," and the superstitious
legends that attached themselves to the fame of the martyrs,
to Cargill and Cameron, to Peden and others in whom
Scriptural gifts of prophecy blended with Celtic second
sight. Still darker stories were whispered of the persecu-
tors, believed to have sold themselves to the devil that they
might have power over the Lord's people ; of " bloody
Mackenzie," the Lord Advocate ; of Grierson of Lag, in
whose hands a cup of wine would turn to blood ; of the
calm cruelty of Claver house, charmed against bullets ; of
the ruthlessness of Dalziel, who, with Tartar manners
brought from Russian wars, with his bygone dress and
the outlandish beard unshaved since Charles I.'s execu-
tion, might well seem an infernal monster. But all the
223
Bonnie Scotland
slaughters, the maddening tortures by boot and by
thumbkins, the miserable imprisonments on the Bass Rock
and in Dunnottar Castle, the mockery of lighter spirits
among the populace, only went to harden Presbyterian
endurance. The Covenanter wrapped tighter about him
his blood-stained cloak of orthodoxy till that bitter wind
blew over. Then the westland, so vainly harried and
dragooned towards conformity, proved a hot -bed of
strong Protestant and Presbyterian feeling, inspired by
resentment as well as by religion, a lesson in the use of
persecution that stops short of extermination.
The quartering of Highland clans was among those
means of grace brought to bear on the stubborn Whigs,
with whose scruples the Gael as a rule had scant sympathy.
But the great western clan Campbell, neighbours of the
Whig country across the Clyde, obeyed chiefs otherwise
tempered, two of whom rank among the victims of Charles
II. 's reign ; and the House of Argyll continued to furnish
champions for the Whig and Presbyterian interest. Over
adjacent clans, the powerful Macallum More had too much
played the tyrant ; then it was hatred to the Campbells
as much as loyalty to Charles or James that brought so
many tartans round the banner of Montrose and Dundee.
On the other hand, sore memories of that Philistine
" Highland host " helped to keep the Whig country loyal
in the later Jacobite movements. It was long before
" wild Highlandmen," or dragoons, would be looked on
with a friendly eye by the sons of the Covenanters. When
the goodman one Saturday night had " waled a portion "
that led him to corrupt the verse, " another wonder in
heaven, and behold a great red dragoon " — he was inter-
224
The Whig Country
rupted by his wife, " I doot ye're making a mistake, John ;
there's no' many o' that sort gets in there ! " but he had a
sound answer ready : " Weel, woman, and doesna' it say
it was for a wonder ? " It was in another part of the
country that some misquoting Mac could chuckle over a
text which seemed to make it easier for a rich man to go
through a needle's eye than for a Cam'ell to enter the
kingdom of heaven.
Whatever they may have been in the past, no worse
if more strong than their neighbours, the Campbells of
Argyll have risen on the flowing tide of progress. The
house lost nothing under that statesman who figures
as Jeanie Deans's patron, nor under that host who so
courteously entertained Dr. Johnson, though his wife
would not speak to Boswell. The late Duke, a man
of note in any station of life, was looked on as, in a
manner, chief of the Presbyterian establishment, even
when — so have times changed — he could not get one
of his sons elected as member for the county. But long
before his time this Church had ceased to be one and
undivided, soon indeed showing strongly fissiparous
energies, which, till our day, kept it "decomposing but
to recompose."
More than once in these pages the writer has let the
reader shy away from a thistly exposition, which we may
here yoke to and have done with it. Nothing puzzles
strangers more than the fact that till recently a Scottish
parish would have three Presbyterian Churches, differing
not at all in ritual, in discipline, or in such points of doctrine
as are visible to the naked eye unprovided with theological
spectacles. It would be difficult to give southron Gallios
225 29
Bonnie Scotland
the faculty for splitting controversial hairs possessed by
minds trained to subtleness on the Shorter Catechism ;
but an outline of the divisions of the Scottish Church may
perhaps be made plain to the meanest capacity. At least
I will try to be fair, which is more than have been all
exponents of such matters. Like most Scotsmen, I have
an hereditary bias in these controversies. One of my
forebears was a Covenanter extolled among Howie's
Scottish Worthies, who, after being persecuted under
Cromwell for loyalty to Charles, came to be hardly dealt
with for conscience' sake at the hands of that ungrateful
king. I am proud to think of the ancestress who, urged
to move him to safe submission, answered like a true
Presbyterian wife, " that she knew her husband to be so
steadfast in his principles, that nobody needed deal with
him on that head ; for her part, before she would contribute
anything that would break his peace with his Master, she
would rather choose to receive his head at the Cross."
Other friends were not so scrupulous, " two ladies of the first
quality " going so far as to send " a handsome compliment
in plate " to the " advocate's lady," who had the honesty
to return this bribe or ransom when she judged it impossible
to save the prisoner's life. All the same it was saved, and
he lived on till the Revolution year in a state of proscrip-
tion, sometimes hunted into hiding, but throughout a most
" faithful and painful " preacher, who " left many seals of
his ministry," and steadily refused to put himself at ease
by leaving the country, for, " in his pleasant way," he used
to say " he would suffer where he had sinned." His son
followed in his steps ; and his grandson took a leading
part in the early movement of dissent which is presently to
226
K.ILCHURN CASTLE, LOCH AWEy
ARGYLLSHIRE
The Whig Country
be shown as legacy from the Covenanting spirit. But if
the memory of these worthies weighs with me, I was
brought up at an English knee, in a church that held them
much mistaken ; and I was confirmed by the Anglican
Bishop of Gibraltar, within whose diocese the very Pope is
a dissenting minister. Since then I have sat at the feet of
teachers from whom may be learned that to know and
to speak the truth of one's fellow-men is the only sure
foundation for sound divinity. And perhaps an outsider
may be in a better position for taking the altitude of even
the most celestial bodies of faith.
The moving spirit of Presbyterianism has been a con-
sciousness that Christianity claims to be something far
higher than any human institution, the Court of Session,
for instance, or even the British Constitution. Other
countries seem more willing to make practical compromises
between heaven and earth. One has heard of such a
country, whose chief ambassadors of heaven are appointed
with a ceremony in which the holiest influence is implored
to direct a choice published weeks before in every news-
paper as fixedly made by very mortal authorities, who may
be notorious evil livers, open unbelievers, or what a sect-
arian journal has politely qualified as "non-co-religionists. "
But a religiously minded Scot has too much logic, not to
say sense of humour, to take part in such a farce. For
him the Gospel did not dawn from the eyes of Boleyns and
such like ; he took his Scriptures as a law rather than a
title for rulers. His watchword has all along been Christ's
headship of the Church, and his anathema the "Eras-
tianism " that rendered to Caesar what man owes to God
alone. The later Stuarts were not Caesars to wear any halo
227
Bonnie Scotland
in his eyes ; then all the more clearly he saw the futility of
their lay Popedom. That " wisest fool in Christendom "
was perhaps not so far out in his adage " no bishop, no
king." But Scotland held its faith by the same title as he
his crown ; and he and his successors found faith on the
whole stronger than loyalty. The dogmas of that faith
are not the question. It was sadly coloured by the
struggles of its origin, by the character of the nation as
well as the stern scenery of the land, by persecution and
by congenial Calvinistic logic brought back from exile, and
by the troubles of the time in which Puritan influences
were exchanged across the Border.
Scotsmen being, after all, but human, their serious and
democratic view of religion was held with two different
degrees of intensity, which took shape as the main parties
of the Kirk. The one that came to be known as
" Moderate " was hotly reproached with Erastianism, a
less unwillingness to look on religion as a department of
the Civil Service. The other had various nicknames, the
" Wild Party," the " High-fliers," but we may as well call
them the High Churchmen of Scotland, if it be borne in
mind that they favoured Evangelical doctrine while cling-
ing to a union of Church and State, in which the former
was to be predominant. These were, in fact, the heirs of
the Covenanters, who on strongly Protestant soil fought
out the old quarrel between Pope and Emperor. And
whereas the English High Church has been strongest
among the priesthood, in the north, where presbyter is
priest writ small, it is the laity that have rather fostered
ecclesiastic zeal. To Buckle's representation of Scotland
as a priest-ridden people, Mr. H. G. Graham rightly
228
The Whig Country
objects how it would be nearer the truth to speak of a
people-ridden clergy.
The Revolution Settlement secured the victory of
Presbytery over Episcopacy, quieting the contention of a
century. But when Episcopal curates had been " rabbled "
on what was a far from merry Christmas for them, the
extreme wing of the Covenanters were by no means
satisfied with King William's toleration of unsound belief,
and would accept no status at the hands of an uncovenanted
king. Long used to worship spiced with peril, hardship,
and hatred, they held aloof rather than seceded as the
Cameronians, a sect which, with its obscure sub-divisions
of Macmillanites, Russellites, Harleyites, Howdenites, and
so on, still has a feeble remnant of " Reformed Presby-
terians," while the mass of it nearly two centuries later
gravitated into the Free Church, then in part represent-
ing their principles. The militant youth of this body
had been kept out of mischief by being embodied as
the Cameronian Regiment, that fought sturdily against
Jacobites, Papists, and other enemies of a Protestant
succession, and still remembers its origin by carrying a
Bible in every knapsack, and not suffering its band to play
on the Sabbath.
But with changed times the Covenants began to lose
their power as a watchword. Having parted from its
hottest gospellers in the Cameronian following, then being
cooled by milder spirits in Episcopal conformists, presently
admitted to the new order on easy terms, the Kirk's clergy
became more moderate, not much to the satisfaction
of their congregations. The union of the kingdoms,
carried through by crooked ways, and its benefits long
229
Bonnie Scotland
hidden in ignorance, soon called forth all the " thrawn "
aloofness of Scottish patriotism, for the nonce bringing
Jacobite and Cameronian sentiment into one focus. One
of the early acts of the united Parliament was to meddle
with what has been a sorer question north than south of the
Tweed, the patronage of livings. The right of patrons
was now revived and confirmed by an Act making a
" call " from the congregation unnecessary to the placing
of a minister. The ministers themselves were more apt to
sympathise with patronage as easier road to a benefice than
the ordeal of popular election ; but the people strongly
resented the laird's placing of a pastor over them, even
when this privilege was exercised with delicacy and con-
scientiousness, and there were cases like that in Gait's
Annals of the Parish, when the presentee had to be
inducted by military force. This grievance, then, became
a standard in the battle between the Moderate and the
High Party, patronage being looked on as Erastianism
in retail, when its wholesale transactions in prelates and
prayer-books were still angry memories.
With hatred of patronage was involved a zeal for
Evangelical doctrine, which now began to take colour from
other sources than Geneva, and to blur out beyond the
rigid lines of Calvinistic logic. Early in the eighteenth
century the Evangelical party got the name of Marrow-
men, as rallying round a little book which, published in
England, gained popularity north of the Tweed as the
" Marrow " of Christian doctrine, when edited by Boston
of the Fourfold State. The " Marrow " came to be con-
demned by a Moderate majority in the Assembly ; then
for teaching its doctrines and rebuking the general luke-
230
RIVER COE, GLENCOE, ARGYLLSHIRE
The Whig Country
warmness of the Church, the saintly Ebenezer Erskine was
censured by his Presbytery, and finally suspended from the
ministry, along with three sympathetic brethren, Alexander
Moncrieff, William Wilson, and James Fisher. In 1733
these four suspended ministers formed themselves into the
first Presbytery of the original Secession Church, with Fife
as its focus and Erskine as its leading spirit, whose younger
brother Ralph in some respects suggests himself as its
Charles Wesley, giving scandal to severe members by his
love of music and songs not David's.
The Seceders were, in fact, the Scottish Methodists,
having an early ally in Whitfield, who, however, became
a stumbling-block through his willingness to exercise
Christian fellowship with the Erastian establishment ; he
professed it his duty to preach to " the devil's people,"
whereas the Seceders would monopolise him for "the
Lord's people." Nay, more, if testifying scandal-mongers
are to be credited, " that grand impostor " went so far as at
Lisbon to " symbolise with Popery " by attending a Catholic
Lenten service, where the Crucifixion was represented
" in a most God-dishonouring, heaven-daring, ridiculous,
and idolatrous manner." About the same time as the
Secession, rather earlier indeed, was formed the Glassite sect,
still seated at Perth ; but they went off upon a narrow side
track, and may be neglected in a general view of Scottish
religious life. A generation later Pennant reports the
population of Perth as 11,000, of whom 9000 still
belonged to the Kirk, the rest being Episcopalian, Non-
jurors (these chiefly "venerable females"), Glassites, and
Seceders. Independents, Baptists, and such like came later
on from England, but these exotic congregations are still
231
Bonnie Scotland
a mere scattering, hardly found outside of large towns.
Carlyle might have remembered such exceptions, when
he dogmatised that " all dissent in Scotland is merely a
stricter adherence to the National Kirk in all points."
The Secession Church soon began to disseminate itself,
but almost as soon developed a tendency to disintegration.
Over the question of the test exacted from municipal
authorities the body split into Burghers and anti-Burghers,
the latter strongly holding it inconsistent to use a form of
oath as to " the true religion presently professed within this
realm," when in their view the religion thus professed was
far from the truth. This " breach " was acrimoniously
maintained even when Test Acts had been abolished ; then
the Seceders underwent further fission into " Old Lights,"
" New Lights," and others claiming to represent the
original doctrines of the Secession. Twenty years after
that first schism, a kindred but independent sect had come
to birth under the title of the " Relief Church," seeking
relief for tender consciences from Moderate tyranny, while
its leader, Thomas Gillespie, perhaps through association
with English nonconformity, made some scrupulous ex-
ceptions to the former seceding platform, and some touch
of innovation, as the use of hymns, upon the Presbyterian
practice.
The reader need not be troubled with all the sunderings
of sectlets, one or two of which still testify in out-of-the-
way corners like " Thrums." This much may be noted,
that Presbyterian differences have been not much exported
from Scotland, though, indeed, American Churches still
show some trace of fissions that began on this side the
Atlantic. The root of such differences was usually a
232
The Whig Country
narrowly pent-up earnestness that looked not for truth
beyond its own horizon ; but the Scot abroad has more
readily seen for himself the proper proportions of his own
little Bethel in all Christendom. Then, of course, he does
not carry beyond the Border that bone of contention, the
joint connecting Church and State. The original Seceders
had not been much concerned on that point ; but a long
course of abstinence from public endowments gave them
new views, till the most conspicuous device on their banner
came to be " Voluntaryism " — that is, the practical notion
that ministers should be paid by those who wish to hear
them.
While these dissenting sects were multiplying themselves,
the Moderate party in the Church throve the more by
their absence. During the philosophical eighteenth century
the clergy declined upon " sanctified common sense," some
of them, " a waeful bunch o' cauldrife professors," making
easy accommodations with worldliness, science, and even
free thought ; and as, after the extinction of the Jacobite
spirit, Scotland settled down to a course of material
improvement, its official teachers waxed fat and lethargic,
while the nonjuring Episcopalians for a time enjoyed the
wholesome discipline of persecution. The popular theology
indeed was never without champions in the Kirk pulpits.
A collegiate church might have two ministers, representing
either party and preaching against each other, as when, in
Greyfriars Church, young Walter Scott, if not a u half-day
hearer," sat alternately under Principal Robertson and Dr.
Erskine, the Moderate and the Evangelical leaders. But
if the warmer doctrine were cherished in the hearts of
godly hearers, Erastianism dominated the Church courts of
233 so
Bonnie Scotland
a generation in which Pitt's viceroy Dundas practically
governed Scotland, and robed bullies like Braxfield sent to
banishment political martyrs, inspired by the lurid glow of
the French Revolution.
Then, the long war with Napoleon having ceased to
stifle free thought and free speech, the Tory rule of Scotland
had to face a rising demand for reform, a movement heated
through the sufferings brought upon the working classes
by shiftings of economic conditions after the peace, and
by the bungling interference of Government with trade's
natural course. The new sentiment found champions in a
knot of Whig lawyers, whose weapon was the Edinburgh
Review. The Church was stirred by sympathy with the
popular cause, whose name had sprung from its loins. A
religious revival came in on the flowing tide of Whiggism,
and with the passing of the Reform Bill the Evangelical
party began to recover their ascendency, led by the
eloquent Chalmers, himself of Tory leanings and a con-
vert from Moderate indifference. A by-product of this
enthusiasm was the sect popularly but incorrectly dubbed
the Irvingites, which found more acceptance about London
than in Scotland.
The new fermentation soon proved strong enough to
burst old bottles that had served for the moderate vintage
of faith. The spirit of the Covenanters came to life in the
" non-Intrusion Controversy," the gist of which was the
right of the people to choose their own mouthpiece of
edification. It is rare to find a new Scotch story ; but here
is one that has never yet appeared in print. I remember
as a lad hearing from an old shepherd his account of such
a dispute in his native parish. " There was a chiel' wi' a
BEN CRUACHAN FROM INVERLOCHY,
ARGYLLSHIRE
The Whig Country
poodered held cam' doun frae Edinburgh," was his account
of the legal proceedings, " and he made the folk a lang
clishmaclavering speech — ye never heard sic havers in yer
born days ! They needna' care what like a minister was
pit in ! It was a' the same doctrine, and the mahn made
nae differ ! But up gat an auld wise-like elder had sat in
that kirk since he was a laddie ; and says he, * What did
I hear the gowk saying ? What is the big, blethering
brute tellin' me ? * says he. ' Does he mean for tae mak' a
body believe that a saft, young, foozy, wersh turneep's as
guid as a fine, auld Swedish one ?' says he." Then this son
of the Whig country looked up to heaven, and never can
I forget the solemnity with which he declared, amid the
silence of the eternal hills — " Mahn, it was a graund
answer ! "
The first step was the resuscitation of a claim that the
patron's nomination fell through unless countersigned by
a call from the people. The General Assembly passed an
Act confirming this popular Veto, which for a time went
unchallenged, patrons having learned to "ca' canny" in
the exercise of their rights. But, after some years, the
momentous Auchterarder case, where an obstinate patron
persisted in forcing his nominee on an objecting congre-
gation, brought about a collision between the laws of
Church and State. A majority of the Court of Session,
confirmed by the House of Lords, pronounced the Veto
illegal. The Church accepted the judgment as affecting
the temporalities of the living, but refused to ordain the
intruded pastor. All Scotland was in a blaze of con-
troversy ; the very schoolboys took sides as Intrusionists
and non- Intrusionists. In the Strathbogie Presbytery
235
Bonnie Scotland
seven ministers were suspended by the Church for obeying
the Court of Session, to whose bar were brought seven
others for not obeying it in the Dunkeld Presbytery.
A deadlock thus arose, out of which there appeared no
escape but by secession, so long as the Government refused
to recognise the strength of this popular movement.
A little patience would probably have brought relief
by law ; but the perfervid sons of the Covenanters were
in no mood for patience. The " Headship of Christ "
was in question, and no prospect of loss or suffering
appalled spirits exalted in such a cause. This movement,
it must be remembered, had small sympathy with the
Voluntaryism of dissent. Its leaders as yet strongly
maintained the connection of Church and State, only,
in their eyes, the Church must stand above the State.
The Free Churchman's attitude at the Disruption was a
consistent one, entirely reasonable from the premises on
which his Church based its teaching. He took the grand
tone of the ages of faith ; and there was something noble
in his disdain for mandates of earthly law, which he treated
as served by creatures of a day on the servants of the
eternal Jehovah.
The Disruption took place at the General Assembly of
1843. The retiring Moderator, after reading a protest
against the invasion of the Church's liberties, headed a
procession to a spacious hall in the Canonmills suburb,
where, electing Dr. Chalmers as their first president, the
protesters constituted themselves the Assembly of what
they maintained to be the true Church of Scotland. The
Government had expected a secession of some score or
two of hot heads ; but nearly five hundred ministers went
236
The Whig Country
out of their churches and manses, giving up all for con-
science' sake with a courage that at once roused a wave of
generous sympathy. The building up of the new Church
was set about with true Scottish energy, prudence, ay, and
generosity. For when Cockney jesters sneer at Scottish
poverty, they do not consider how ready this people is to
spend its savings and sparings on what it believes a good
cause. Mainly from the contributions of the poorer class
was the Free Church sustained. Most of the rich and
mighty were against it, some of them bitterly hostile,
many landlords refusing ground for sites, so that at first
preachers and congregations had often some taste of the
Covenanters' sufferings in open-air worship. Very bitter
was the feeling between the ruptured congregations and
of the seceding ministers against the "residuum," that
had to fill hundreds of empty livings in haste, not always
with the most fitting candidates. This ill-wind blew
good to not a few "stickit ministers," who had little
hoped to wag their heads in a pulpit, and the old Adam
in the Seceders found matter for much scornful criticism
of those " residuary cattle."
Long before such animosity had died down, the new
body had its churches, manses, schools, and colleges built
and endowed on a scale that gave Scotland two Establish-
ments instead of one. But its main strength was the fact
of its commanding the allegiance of the most spiritually
minded and intellectual among the people. Its very
pride was no vainglory. English dissent is apt to take
a socially humble and apologetic attitude. A Free
Churchman never thought of himself as a dissenter, and
could not be looked down upon from any point of view.
237
Bonnie Scotland
In all parts of the country his Church took rank beside
the Establishment ; in some it gained an ascendency. In
the Highlands especially, where the exaltation of warm
Celtic blood goes to its highest, and where eloquent
ministers have inherited the devotion once inspired by
warlike chiefs, the " Auld Kirk " is often little more than
empty walls and a stipend. There is a tale of graceless
laddies boasting against each other of their reckless deeds.
One brags of having been to the circus, which another
caps by a visit to the theatre, but the third is bold to avow
a darker crime, " I once went to the English Chaipel."
As told in some parts of the country, this fable has a
further climax of iniquity in the Established Church, erst
so dear.
While the Free Church went on flourishing apart, the
Establishment was moved to drop the main standard of
so much controversy. Its General Assembly petitioned
for the abolition of patronage, which was brought about
so easily that most of the lairds interested did not choose
to demand the compensation voted to them for their
thorny rights of presentation. In principle nothing seemed
to keep the Churches apart ; but the Establishment had
been drifting into a broader theology and a new toleration
of liturgical worship, which separated it from an organisa-
tion more conservative in religious matters, yet a school
of liberalism in politics that gave Mr. Gladstone his hold
over Scotland. The " Auld Kirk " lost more and more its
suspicion of prelatical ways. Men still alive can remember
how Dr. Robert Lee was indicted for the introduction of
an organ and a prayer-book. Now such scandalous in-
novations are perhaps the rule rather than the exception
238
THE MORVEN HILLS FROM APPIN,
ARGYLLSHIRE
The Whig Country
in parish churches, and instrumental music has crept also
into Free Churches, where a generation ago the use of
hymns was scouted as unscriptural. For a time some
faithful worshippers in the city congregations insisted on
conspicuously standing to pray and sitting to sing psalms,
like their fathers ; but even in out-of-the-way places now
there is a gradual conforming to the customs once banned
as English or Papist.
The Dissenters, meanwhile, had been touched by the
spirit of the time. As far back as 1820, two of the chief
sects came together again, their walls of separation, indeed,
having long fallen down. After the Disruption a further
movement of adhesion took place, and while some con-
gregations remained hugging their microscopic differences,
most of the dissenting bodies joined to form the United
Presbyterian Church, which, by a century's practice rather
than on original principle, has evolved the doctrine of
Voluntaryism as the backbone of its communion, repudiat-
ing any interference of the State with the teaching of
religion.
Certain fragments of secession, for their part, had
been attracted into the glowing mass of the Free Church.
This Church, also, began to suffer change. When the
original stalwarts, who made much of a theoretical relation
of Church and State, died off into a minority, the second
generation was found less concerned about " Disruption
principles " than in sympathy with Evangelical doctrine.
The position of Scottish Presbyterians out of Scotland,
where their differences of constitution were idle words,
helped to open shrewd eyes to the absurdity of three
Churches, all professing the same main doctrines, yet
239
Bonnie Scotland
standing as rivals to each other. As the heat of controversy
grew cool, more friendly relations became possible, and
the ministers of the one might fill the pulpits of the other.
In certain parishes having a summer population, it would
be arranged to keep only one Church open in winter
The waste of power in the three almost identical bodies
could not but strike a practical people sooner or later. The
Established Church seemed to flirt too boldly with deans
and Oxford professors ; but what hindered the Free and
the U.P. Church from making a match of it? After
long courtship and much discussion of settlements, their
alliance was celebrated in 1900, and now these two
organisations are merged under the title of the United
Free Church.
This union was not consummated without hot
opposition, a small remnant of the Free Church standing
outside and claiming at law the disposal of the great
endowments bestowed on certain principles now put into
the background. As I write, the House of Lords still
delays its decision on a question of momentous interest,
which the Scottish Courts decided in favour of the main
body. There can be no doubt that what has already
got the nickname of the " Wee Free" Church better
represents the views of its spiritual fathers. But if all
Churches were brought to payment of ancestral debts,
otherwise than in paper money of Creeds and Confessions,
some theological Statute of Limitations would be required.
Whatever be the result, it should prove a lesson against
investing any Church in a suit of clothes sure to be out-
grown or to go out of fashion. Perhaps the most remark-
able feature of this particular case is, that almost for the
240
The Whig Country
first time in Scottish ecclesiastical history there has been
talk of a compromise.
Another fragment had seceded some years before as
the Free Presbyterian Church, their raison d'etre being
testimony against the Declaratory Act by which the Free
Church Assembly had loosened the bonds of subscription,
that its doctrine might run in harness with the slightly less
stringent views of the uniting body. So, in more than
one parish, instead of three may now be found four
Presbyterian places of worship : the Established Church,
the United Free Church, which often has practically taken
its place, the Free Presbyterian, and a congregation belong-
ing to that rump of the Free Church which denounced
the Union. There were scenes of violence in the High-
lands, where Free Churches came to be hotly defended
against their new title by obstinate adherents of the order
half a century old, during which Laodicean humorists
had interpreted the bells of the Establishment as ringing
out " I am the Old Kirk," to which the Free Church
answered back in a deeper note, " I am the true old Kirk/'
but then the U.P. bell jangled back, " It's me ! it's me ! "
As for the Episcopal body that now holds its head so high,
only in the last century was it suffered to have a bell at
all, long paying dear for its spells of forced supremacy.
One weaned from the Church of his forefathers, yet
not from what should be the quod semper, quod ubique et
quod ab omnibus of all beliefs, may venture to give his
opinion, without suspicion if not without offence, that the
Free Church of Chalmers and Guthrie best represented the
true soul of Scottish Presbyterianism and enshrined the
strongest religious life of its first generation. But in our
241 31
Bonnie Scotland
generation this body has generated an impulse that may
lead to fresh flyting between two parties now unequally
yoked together. It had one divine eminently pious,
eminently learned, eminently loyal to his Church, unless
in coming to certain modern conclusions that are more
or less freely accepted by almost every mind qualified to
judge. Him the more bigoted sort picked out as quarry
for one of the heresy-hunts which make a favourite sport
in the north. I heard the case against him put in a nut-
shell by one of the old women who were too much deferred
to in this matter. "It might be true," admitted this
mother in Caledonian Israel, " that Moses did not write
the account of his own death ; but if you began there
where were you going to stop ? " so she was clear for
muzzling that troublesome scholar. He had been teaching
his " unsound " views, without much observation, to a
few students in an out-of-the-way corner. According to
the milder laws of modern persecution, he was unwillingly
driven into renown, into wide influence, and into the arms
of an English University, that felt itself honoured in
receiving such a scapegoat. All the more enlightened
spirits of his own Communion are now ashamed of the
silencing that sent him into famous exile. Many of them
were ashamed of it at the time ; and the majority against
him was partly made up of men who knew that he spoke
truth, but thought it not well that the truth should be
freely spoken. The theologians who take this tone are
no longer inspired by the virtue of the Covenanters, and
have fallen away from the heritage of that great preacher
that feared not the face of man, nor woman.
Enthusiasts like Knox are out of vogue in our day ;
242
A CROFT NEAR LOCH ETIVE,
ARGYLLSHIRE
The Whig Country
but perhaps can be seen all the more clearly what we owe
to the stiffness with which they stood out, that neither
King nor Pope should bind the conscience, taught by
freedom to claim its rights, too, against Parliament and
Presbytery. Out of the troubles of the time when
Scotland was a distressful country, somewhat given to
"the blind hysterics of the Celt," came the resolute
temper that has turned poverty to gain and is turning
superstition to knowledge. At all events, no account of
" Bonnie Scotland " is complete that does not take in the
stern and wild, not to say grim and gloomy aspects often
presented by the Whig country.
243
CHAPTER XII
GALLOWAY
THE Whig country included Galloway, that rough south-
western corner that stretches its Mull towards Ireland in
what Boece calls " ane great snout of crags/' The whole
promontory formed by the stewartry of Kirkcudbright
and the county of Wigtown, once known as Upper and
Lower Galloway, and then taking in parts of Ayr and
Dumfries, seems to concentrate many of the qualities of
Scotland, Land und Leute. This northern Cornwall lent
itself of old as a scene for dark romance, whose combats
glitter here and there through deepest mists of history.
Its Attacott people, Picts or what not, mixed with Scots
from Ireland and Gaels from who knows where, run to
dark hair and the tallest forms of Britain, perhaps even
of Europe, while their character is a blend of especially
perfervid spirit. Though this corner was the first foot-
hold of Christianity on the mainland, it long remained
notable for untamed fierceness, like that of the northern
mountain cats. So near England, it came to glow with
a patriotism more fervent than its loyalty ; and some of
the doughtiest exploits of Wallace and Bruce were done
upon its borders, not always indeed with the help of the
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Galloway
Galwegians. Mr. S. R. Crockett, who in a generation
too forgetful of Guy Mannering has come forward to
give Galloway its fair share of fame, tells us how most of
its gentry, as well as its long-limbed and hot-hearted
peasants, threw themselves into the Covenant struggle,
their "Praying Societies" throughout making camps of
resistance and protest against the persecutors ; and in
quieter times the same enthusiasm has flared up into will-
o'-the-wisp fanaticism bred among the moss hags. Later
on, as we know from Scott, the wild coasts of Galloway
reared a daring breed of smugglers to testify for what they
called " fair trade " with the Isle of Man. That trans-
atlanticised firebrand, Paul Jones, hailed from Galloway,
to which he came back to threaten the mouth of his
native Dee.
Whatever this people's hand finds to do, it has been
apt to do it with might and main. What it chiefly finds
to do in our day is the rearing of cattle, that seem to
thrive best on the promontories of our island ; then also
Galloway has given its name to a hardy horseflesh, and
pigs, too, are largely reared in this region. Such an
authority as the author of Field and Fern judges no beef
better than that which matches the brawn of Galloway
men. And these tall fellows have the name of living to
a good old age, as witness the Galloway story of a man
of threescore and ten found " greeting " when his father
had given him " his licks " for throwing stones at his
grandfather.
By this time the reader must have an inkling how the
names Highland and Lowland are but relative. The
knobbed area of Scotland, which, as a native boasted,
Bonnie Scotland
would be as big as England " if ye flattened it oot,"
consists mainly of two uplands, that of the south smaller,
greener, and less boldly mountainous, between which dips
a more thickly peopled interval, at one point but forty
miles broad from sea to sea, where only the rich river
straths and the coast plains are right lowlands, never out
of sight of sheep-dotted hills. Galloway is mainly a wild
region of rocks, lochs, moors, and bogs, in the north
rising to mountains almost as high as any in England.
This ground seems too much neglected by tourists, who
yet might find here and there smart hotels to their mind,
oftener the more old-fashioned inns where they would
have to do not with managers and foreign waiters, but
with housewifely Meg Dods and decent servant lasses,
now instructed by the spread of knowledge no longer to
mistake a tooth-brush as an instrument for sharpening
the appetite before dinner. We Scots have a grudge
against southrons for the degree to which they have
sophisticated the hotels on more frequented routes,
especially in the matter of charges. The butterfly-
travellers as well as the bee-travellers should have a
grievance against their landlords (Limited) not so much
for making hay while the holiday sun shines, as for the
tyranny that tries to impose upon them boarding-house
regulations at Piccadilly prices. My grudge at those
exotic caravanserais is that they try to set all their guests
"feeding like one," and draw out the chief meal of
the day through that sweetest hour of the northern
summer —
'Twixt the gloaming and the mirk,
When the kye come hame.
246
A BIRCH-WOOD IN SPRINGTIME, BY LOCH MAREE,
ROSS-SHIRE
Galloway
This grumble and others one need not make in
Galloway, where strangers not too pock-puddingish about
being " done well," would find a hearty welcome and
openings for exploring a country sacred through memories
of patriots and martyrs, dotted with ruined shrines and
with strongholds of Douglases, Kennedys, Gordons, who
in their lifetime loved better to hear the lark sing than
the mouse squeak. From Newton-Stewart, not yet wide
awake to its capabilities as a tourist centre, one has half
a day's walk northwards into the heart of the Galloway
Highlands, where Merrick raises its heathery Pente-
dactylon above the lovely Glen and Loch of Trool, one of
the fastnesses of Bruce's Wandtrj'dkrt. Another goal in
these hills is Murray's Monument, commemorating one
of Scotland's gifted herd-loons, who with homely school-
ing raised himself to be Doctor of Divinity and Professor
of Oriental Languages. Three heights in Galloway bear
the name of Cairnsmore, the highest Cairnsmore of
Carsphairn, approached from the town of New Galloway
by Loch Ken, Kenmure Castle, and the beautiful Glenkens.
Passing beyond Carsphairn to Dalmellington, we can
strike by rail into the native country of Burns, who at
the Galloway spa of Lochenbreck wrote down his " Scots
wha hae," meetly composed by him, it is said, on a wild
ride through a stormy night.
The chief town of Galloway is Stranraer, port of the
shortest sea-crossing to Belfast, by Loch Ryan ; but the
nearest point to Ireland is Portpatrick, where that saint
could step across the Channel long before so much money
had been sunk on an abandoned harbour. The lion of
Portpatrick is the glen and ruin of Dunskey ; as that of
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Bonnie Scotland
Stranraer the grounds of Castle Kennedy, nursing exotics
that attest the mildness of this western shore. The Irish
express trains dash also past the beauties of Glenluce and
its ruins haunted by legends of Michael Scott the Wizard,
of Peden the Covenanting prophet, and of that hapless
Bride of Lammermoor, whose story seems to have been
distorted as well as transplanted to the other side of the
country. Luce Bay separates the Mull of Galloway from
a broader promontory in which the lochs of Mochrum
are perhaps the finest nook. Its southern point is the
green " Isle " of Whithorn, where Scottish Christianity
was planted by St. Ninian ; and still stand fragments of the
famous monastery sought by James of the Iron Belt, and
many another penitential pilgrim. On the same branch
line from Newton-Stewart, Wigtown rears above its bay a
monument of that shamefullest tragedy of the Covenant-
ing persecutions, when two women martyrs were fastened
to stakes to be drowned by the tide. At the mouth of
the Cree is Creetown, " Portanferry " of Guy Mannering^
from which can be visited caves fit to shelter Dirck
Hatteraick, and the ruins of Barholm, that claims to be
" Ellangowan," and to have given concealment to John
Knox. Gatehouse of Fleet is a picturesque place in
the district illustrated by the Faed brothers' pictures, and
sanctified by the preaching of Samuel Rutherford. Farther
east, on its inlet, is reached the county town Kirkcudbright,
church of St. Cuthbert, who would hardly know his own
name as now pronounced Kirkoobry. Here we have an
interesting museum of Galloway antiquities ; and a few
miles off is Dundrennan Abbey, poor Mary's last rest-
ing place in her troubled kingdom, whence she gave
248
Galloway
herself to the mercy of Elizabeth after her flight from
Langside. The Kirkcudbright branch takes us back to
the main line at Castle Douglas, near which stands the
grim tower of a stronghold whose lords were once a terror
to their own country, while over the Border English nurses
would hush babes to rest with —
Hush ye, hush ye, dinna fret ye :
The Black Douglas shall na' get ye I
Like too many other noble Scottish names, this one
has sadly degenerated, its last exploit to be proud of
ending in the catastrophe that cut short Lord Francis
Douglas's life on the first ascent of the Matterhorn ; and
his brother, the late Marquis of Queensberry, made some
stir in the world, least unenviably perhaps by the Queens-
berry rules of boxing. Several members of the family
have in modern days come to an obscurely tragic end, as
if urged by the Nemesis of forgotten bloodshed. Their
chief title, the Dukedom of Queensberry, had passed to
the house of Buccleuch, along with the princely seat of
Drumlanrig in Nithsdale.
The oldest bridge in Scotland leads over the Nith
to the largest town of the southern counties, out of
Galloway in the letter, but not in the spirit. Dumfries,
originally the fastness of Frisian pirates whose stock
would " go far," is set among famous sites and relics.
In the Church of its Greyfriars, Bruce stabbed the Red
Comyn, a deed "made siccar" by an ancestor of the
Empress of the French. Near the town are the remains
of Lincluden Abbey, "ruins yet beauteous in decay."
To the south, on the Galloway side of the estuary,
249 32
Bonnie Scotland
Criffel's cone rises above the walls of Sweetheart Abbey,
built by John Baliol's widow as tomb in which her
husband's heart should lie upon her own. On the
opposite side stands another stately ruin, Caer laverock
Castle, where in the churchyard lies " Old Mortality," as
"Jeanie Deans" rests at Irongray. To the north is
Lochmaben, the castle, perhaps the birthplace, of Robert
Bruce. But the name that first rises to memory in this
Nithsdale countryside is Robert Burns, tenant of Ellisland
under that Dalswinton laird for whom is claimed the
honour of the earliest steamboat experiments. Bruce,
possibly born at Turnberry Castle on the Carrick coast,
may have been an Ayrshire man like Burns, who came
to end his broken life at Dumfries, now counting itself
honoured by the sepulchre of one who thus wrote his
own epitaph —
The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn and wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow,
And softer flame ;
But thoughtless follies laid him low,
And stained his name.
Scotland's heart warms to the memory of Robbie
Burns, over whose sayings and doings in lifetime big wigs
about Dumfries were shaken and grave eyes upturned.
As if in repentance for his hard life and troubled death,
his countrymen will now hear no word against the poet,
who could be severe enough on his own frailities.
And if mortal ever deserved kindly judgment, it was he
whose heart went out not only to his Jeans and Annies,
but to his " auld mare Maggie," to a hare wounded by
250
ON THE RIVER AYR, AYRSHIRE
Galloway
" barb'rous art," to dumb cattle left out in a storm, even
to such a "poor earth-companion and fellow-mortal' ' as
a field-mouse ; he who would not willingly have crushed
with his ploughshare a "wee, modest, crimson -tippit
flower " ; who had no hatred for the very enemy of
mankind — " Wad ye take a thought and mend ! " It is
vain to deny or conceal that " he had twa faults, or maybe
three/' but fate indeed gave him hard measure. Had his
sphere been a higher one, he would not have been the
man he was ; yet with a little ease, with wise friends to
counsel " prudent, cautious self-control," with Pitt's port
or even Byron's hock and soda-water instead of tippenny
and usquebaugh among spell-bound tavern cronies, might
he not have lived to draw as good an income from the
Civil Service as Wordsworth, to become a douce elder of the
Kirk, and to take a seat among the orthodox bon vivants
of the Nocfes ? As it is, his humble birthplace draws more
pilgrims than come to Stratford-on-Avon from all over the
world, for —
Who his human heart has laid
To Nature's bosom nearer ?
Who sweetened toil like him, or paid
To love a tribute dearer ?
Through all his tuneful art, how strong
The human feeling gushes !
The very moonlight of his song
Is warm with smiles and blushes !
This singer of the people's joys and sorrows represents
the soft side to a strong nature. From the scene of his
last days it is but a step to Annandale, cradle of a neigh-
bour genius that is Scotland's boast rather than her darling.
251
Bonnie Scotland
Thomas Carlyle, who ascended into such a clear heaven
of contempt for the "mostly fools" of his "swindler
century," fell short of Burns in one highest point of
wisdom. He knew himself hardly better than did his
amazed contemporaries ; and seems never to have guessed
what short work some of his admired strong men would
have made of one who preached the gospel of silence in
such long-drawn screeds of rhetoric, rising often to a
falsetto note. An unchristianised Calvinist and Cove-
nanter ; a poet " wanting the accomplishment of verse " ;
a painter in " hues of earthquake and eclipse " ; a philo-
sopher who " thought in a passion " ; a Stoic who could
not abide the crowing of a cock ; an historian who " saw
history in flashes of lightning " ; a reformer " calling down
fire from heaven whenever he cannot readily lay his hand
on the match-box " ; a painful preacher who has ministered
more amusement than repentance ; a prophet who could
not recognise the master force of his own age ; a ferocious
moralist and a bitter humorist, this " great imperfect
man " owes much of his renown to a gnarled eccentricity
which at first scared away readers, but more to the ardour
that has inspired so many minds rejecting both his pre-
mises and his conclusions. To some who receive Sartor
Resartus into the canon of immortality, his idolatry of
strength, so natural to the sedentary, bilious student, seems
the weakness of his character, through which he was led to
work up bloodshot halos for unscrupulous violence, from
his fancy picture of Dr. Francia to his fond glorification of
Frederick the Great, till at last he appears struggling to
pervert his own moral judgment. A countryman of his
who, but for another weakness, might have made himself
252
Galloway
better known, Patrick Proctor Alexander, has well exposed
his obliquity of vision in a burlesque that shows as much
wisdom as fooling ; and to my mind the soundest judgment
of Carlyle comes across the Atlantic from James Russell
Lowell : —
w If not a profound thinker, he had what was next best : he
felt profoundly, and his cry came out of the depths. The stern
Calvinism of his early training was rekindled by his imagination
to the old fervour of Wishart and Brown, and became a new
phenomenon as he reproduced it subtilised by German trans-
cendentalism and German culture. Imagination, if it lays hold
of a Scotsman, possesses him in the old demoniac sense of the
word, and that hard logical nature, if the Hebrew fire once gets
fair headway in it, burns unquenchable as an anthracite coal-mine.
But to utilise these sacred heats, to employ them, as a literary
man is always tempted, to keep the domestic pot a-boiling — is
such a thing possible ? Only too possible, we fear ; and Mr.
Carlyle is an example of it. If the languid public long for a
sensation, the excitement of making one becomes also a necessity
of the successful author, as the intellectual nerves grow duller and
the old inspiration that came unbidden to the bare garret grows
shyer and shyer of the comfortable parlour. As he himself said
thirty years ago of Edward Irving, c Unconsciously, for the most
part in deep unconsciousness, there was now the impossibility
to live neglected — to walk on the quiet paths where alone it is
well with us. Singularity must henceforth succeed singularity.
O foulest Circean draught, thou poison of Popular Applause !
madness is in thee and death ; thy end is Bedlam and the grave.*
Mr. Carlyle won his first successes as a kind of preacher in print.
His fervour, his oddity of manner, his pugnacious paradox, drew
the crowd ; the truth, or, at any rate, the faith that underlay
them all, brought also the fitter audience, though fewer. But the
curse was upon him ; he must attract, he must astonish. Thence-
forth he has done nothing but revamp his telling things ; but
253
Bonnie Scotland
the oddity has become always odder, the paradoxes more para-
doxical. No very large share of truth falls to the apprehension of
any one man ; let him keep it sacred, and beware of repeating it
till it turn to falsehood on his lips by becoming ritual."
After all Carlyle was not wholly a typical Scotsman.
His stock seems to have come from Cumberland, and his
birthplace, not far from the Border, is one of Scotland's
less bonnie airts. He was very Lowlandish, indeed, in
some features : in his perfervidness, in his intolerance, in
the coarseness of mental grain that chuckles over abusive
nicknames, and in volcanic stirrings of sympathy that
enabled him to appreciate Burns. He was above all
himself, Der Einzige, as he proclaimed others, a most
portentous and vigorous force in literature, that has been
transmuted into different modes of intellectual motion.
Whatever rank this coruscating star may eventually take
in the firmament of fame, its spectrum is not that of
Scotland. At the best, he represents but one side of his
country's nature, as appears in his grudging and belittling
view of Scott, who more fully unites the chequered
elements of the national character.
In a generation much blinded by literary superstitions
and idolatries, Scotsmen should faithfully testify to Scott
as the truest genius of their country. With him for
guide, we entered his beloved Borderland ; he has seldom
been far from us as we passed through its scenes and
monuments, and still on the rhinns of Galloway and in
the dales of Dumfries, his shade attends us ; nor does it
wholly vanish as we cross the Solway viaduct into " Happy
England," pronounced by a recent American writer, after
his lights, " a section more beautiful perhaps to the eye/'
254
Galloway
forsooth, than Bonnie Scotland, but " certainly not one
which appeals more forcibly to the imagination." Burns
did something, Carlyle almost nothing, towards fusing
angry memories of the past into one national sentiment.
To the spells of that Wizard of the North we chiefly owe
it that now " Highland and Lowland, all our hearts are
Scotch ! " as a romancer of our own time exclaims, who
elsewhere recalls Stewart of Garth's story how, when a
Highland regiment landed at Portpatrick after long exile,
the kilted veterans flung themselves down to kiss the
ground of Galloway, so far from their native heath.
THl BND
Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.
I
DA
866
M6
1912
Moncrieff , Ascott Robert
Hope
Bonnie Scotland
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